The Twentieth 
Century American 



Being 

A Comparative Study of the Peoples of 

the Two Great Anglo-Saxon Nations 



By 
H. Perry Robinson 

Author of " Men Born Equal," " The Autobiography 
of a Black Bear," etc. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Zbe "Knickerbocker lprees 

1908 



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I 



UflnnnTorCyNGRESsI 
•»0C0Dles ««.*„«, 

JUN 24 1908 

2-/63 8 2. 
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Copyright, 1908 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube Unfcfeetbocher press, flew Both 



To 

Those Readers, 

Whether English or American, 

who 

agree with whatever is said in the 

following pages in laudation of 

their own Country 

This Book 

is Inscribed in the hope 

that they will be equally ready to accept 

whatever they find in praise 

OF 

The Other. 



PKEFATORY NOTE 

There are already many books about America; but 
the majority of these have been written by Englishmen 
after so brief an acquaintance with the country that it 
is doubtful whether they contribute much to English 
knowledge of the subject 

My reason for adding another volume to the list is 
the hope of being able to do something to promote a 
better understanding between the peoples, having as an 
excuse the fact that I have lived in the United States 
for nearly twenty years, under conditions which have 
given rather exceptional opportunities of intimacy with 
the people of various parts of the country socially, in 
business, and in politics. Wherever my judgment is 
wrong it is not from lack of abundant chance to learn 
the truth. 

Except in one instance — very early in the book — 
I have avoided the use of statistics, in spite of frequent 
temptation to refer to them to fortify arguments which 
must without them appear to be merely the expres- 
sion of an individual opinion. 

H. P. E. 

February, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

An Anglo-American Alliance . 5 

The Avoidance of Entangling Alliances — What the 
Injunction Meant — What it Cannot Mean To-day — The 
Interests of the United States, no less than those of 
England, Demand an Alliance — But Larger Interests 
than those of the Two Peoples are Involved — Amer- 
ican Responsiveness to Ideals — The Greatest Ideal of 
All, Universal Peace : the Practicability of its Attain- 
ment — America's Responsibility — Misconceptions of 
the British Empire — Germany's Position — American 
Susceptibilities. 

CHAPTER II 

The Difference in Point of View . . .35 

The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness — How French- 
men and Germans View it — Englishmen, Americans, 
and " Foreigners " — An Echo of the War of 1812 — An 
Anglo - American Conflict Unthinkable — American 
Feeling for England — The Venezuelan Incident — 
The Pilgrims and Some Secret History — Why Ameri- 
cans still Hate England — Great Britain's Nearness 
to the United States Geographically — Commercially 
— Historically — England's Foreign Ill-wishers in 
America. 

CHAPTER III 

Two Sides of the American Character . . GO 

Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting 

Power — The Americans as Sailors — The Nation's Great- 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

est Asset — Self-reliance of the People — The Making of 
a Doctor — And of a Surveyor — Society in the Rough — 
New York and the Country — An Anglo-Saxon Trait 
— America's Unpreparedness — American Consuls and 
Diplomats — A Homogeneous People — The Value of a 
Common Speech — America more Anglo-Saxon than 
Britain — Mr. Wells and the Future in America. 

CHAPTER IV 

Mutual Misunderstandings . . . . .94 

America's Bigness — A New Atlantis — The Effect of 
Expansion on a People — A Family Estranged — Pars- 
nips — An American Woman in England — An English- 
man in America — International Caricatures — Shibbo- 
leths : dropped H's and a " twang " — Matthew Arnold's 
Clothes — The Honourable S B . 

CHAPTER V 

The American Attitude towards Women . Ill 

The Isolation of the United States — American Ignor- 
ance of the World — Sensitiveness to Criticism — Exag- 
geration of their Own Virtues — The Myth of American 
Chivalrousness — Whence it Originated — The Climatic 
Myth — International Marriages — English Manners and 
American — The View of Womanhood in Youth — Co- 
education of the Sexes — Conjugal Morality — The Artis- 
tic Sense in American Women — Two Stenographers — 
An Incident of Camp-Life — " Molly-be-damned " — A 
Nice Way of Travelling — How do they do it? — Women 
in Public Life — The Conditions which Co-operate — 
The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again. 

CHAPTER VI 

English Humour and American Art . . 145 

American Insularity — A Conkling Story — English Hu- 
mour and American Critics — American Literature and 
English Critics — The American Novel in England — 
And American Art — Wanted, an American Exhibition 



Contents ix 

PAGE 

— The Revolution in the American Point of View — 
" Raining in London " — Domestic and Imported Goods. 

CHAPTER VII 

English and American Education . . .166 

The Rhodes Scholarships — "Pullulating Colleges" — 
Are American Colleges Superior to Oxford or Cam- 
bridge ? — Other Educational Forces — The Postal Laws 
— Ten-cent Magazines and Cheap Books — Pigs in Chi- 
cago — The Press of England and America Compared — 
Mixed Society — Educated Women — Generals as Book- 
sellers — And as Farmhands — The Value of War to a 
People. 

CHAPTER VIII 

A Comparison in Culture ..... 191 

The Advantage of Youth — Japanese Eclecticism and 
American — The Craving for the Best — Cyrano de Ber- 
gerac — Verestschagin — Culture by Paroxysms — Mr. 
Gladstone and the Japanese — Anglo-Saxon Crichtons 
— Americans as Linguists — England's Past and Amer- 
ica's Future — Americanisms in Speech — Why They are 
Disappearing in America — And Appearing in England 
— The Press and the Copyright Laws — A Look into the 
Future. 

CHAPTER IX 

Politics and Politicians ..... 226 

The " English- American " Vote — The Best People in 
Politics — What Politics Means in America — Where 
Corruption Creeps in — The Danger in England — A 
Presidential Nomination for Sale — Buying Legislation 
— Could it Occur in England? — A Delectable Alderman 
— Taxation while you Wait — Perils that England Es- 
capes — The Morality of Congress — Political Corruption 
of the Irish — Democrat and Republican. 



* Contents 

PAGE 

CHAPTER X 

American Politics in England .... 260 

The System of Parties — Interdependence of National 
and Local Organisations — The Federal Government 
and Sovereign States — The Boss of Warwickshire — 
The Unit System — Prime Minister Crooks — Lanark 
and the Nation — New York and Tammany Hall — 
America's Superior Opportunities for Wickedness — 
How England Is Catching up- Campaign Reminis- 
cences — The ' ' Hell-box " — Politics in a Gravel-pit — 
Mr. Hearst and Mr. Bryan. 

CHAPTER XI 

Some Questions of the Moment . . . 285 

Sovereign States and the Federal Government — Cali- 
fornia and the Senate — The Constitutional Powers of 
Congress and the President — Government by Inter- 
pretation — President Roosevelt as an Inspiration to the 
People — A New Conception of the Presidential Office 
— " Teddy " and the " fraid strap " — Mr. Roosevelt and 
the Corporations — As a Politician — His Imperiousness 
— The Negro Problem — The Americanism of the South. 

CHAPTER XII 

Commercial Morality ...... 308 

Are Americans more Honest than Englishmen? — An 
American Peerage — Senators and other Aristocrats — 
Trade and the British Upper Classes — Two Views of a 
Business Career — America's Wild Oats — The Packing 
House Scandals — " American Methods " in Business — 
A Countryman and Some Eggs — A New Dog — The 
Morals of British Peers — A Contract of Mutual Confi- 
dence — Embalmed Beef, Re-mounts, and War Stores 
— The Yellow Press and Mr. Hearst — American View 
of the House of Lords. 



Contents xi 

PACE 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Growth of Honesty 347 

The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon — America's Re- 
semblance to Japan — A German View — Can Ameri- 
cans Lie? — Honesty as the Best Policy — Religious 
Sentiment — Moral and Immoral Railway Managers — 
A Struggle for Self-preservation — Gentlemen in Busi- 
ness — Peculation among Railway Servants — How the 
Old Order Changes, Yielding Place to New — The Strain 
on British Machinery — Americans as Story-Tellers — 
The Incredibility of the Actual. 

CHAPTER XIV 

A Contrast in Principles . . . . .371 

The Commercial Power of the United States — Brit- 
ish Workmanship — Tin-tacks and Conservatism — A 
Prophetic Frenchman — Imperialism in Trade — The 
Anglo-Saxon Spirit — About Chaperons — " Insist upon 
Thyself" — English and American Banks — Dealing in 
Futures — Dog Eat Dog — Two Letters— Commercial 
Octopods — Trusts in America and England — The 
Standard Oil Company — And Solicitors — Legal Chape- 
rons — The Sanctity of Stamped Paper — Conclusions — 
Do "Honest" Traders Exist? 

CHAPTER XV 

The Peoples at Play 408 

American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago — The Power 
of Golf — A Look Ahead — Britain, Mother of Sports- 
Buffalo in New York — And Pheasants on Clapham 
Common — Shooting Foxes and the "Sport" of Wild- 
fowling — The Amateur in American Sport — At Henley 
— And at Large — Teutonic Poppycock. 

CHAPTER XVI 

Summary and Conclusion 429 

A New Way of Making Friends — The Desirability of 



xii Contents 

PAGE 

an Alliance — For the Sake of Both Peoples — And of 
all the World — The Family Resemblance— Mutual Mis- 
understandings — American Conception of the British 
Character — English Misapprehension of Americans — 
Foreign Influences in the United States — Why Poli- 
ticians Hesitate — An Appeal to the People — And to 
Caesar. 

Appendix ........ 451 

Index ......... 453 



The Twentieth Century American 



The Twentieth Century 
American 



" If I can say anything to show that my name is really Make- 
peace, and to increase the source of love between tlie two coun- 
tries, then please, God, I will." — W. M. Thackeray, in Letters 
to an American Family. 

" Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never 
has been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful 
history, herwonderfid literature, her beautiful architecture, the 
historic and poetic associations which cluster about every street 
and river and mountain and valley, her vigorous life, the siveet- 
ness and beauty of her women, the superb manhood of her 
men, her Navy, her gracious hospitality, and her lofty pride — 
although some single race of men may have excelled her in 
some single partictdar — make up a combination never equalled 
in the world." — The late United States Senator Hoar, in An 
Autobiography of Seventy Years. 

" Tlie result of the organisation of the American colonies into 
a state, and of the bringing together of the diverse communities 
contained in these colonies, was the creation not merely of a 
new nation, but of a new temperament. How far this temper- 
ament was to arise from a change of climate, and how far 
from a new political organisation, no one coidd then foresee, 
nor is its origin yet fully analysed ; but the fact itself is notv 
coming to be more and more recognised. It may be that 
Nature said at about that time : ' Thus far the English is my 
best race; but we have had Englishmen enough; now for 
another turning of the globe, and for a further novelty. We 



2 The Twentieth Century American 

need something with a little more buoyancy than the English- 
man; let us lighten the structure, even at some peril in the 
process. Put in one drop more of nervous fluid and make the 
American.'' With that drop, a new range of promise opened 
on the human race, and a lighter, finer, more highly organised 
type of mankind was born." — Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 
Atlantic Monthly, 1886. 

" Tlie foreign observer in America is at once struck by the 
fact that the average of intelligence, as that intelligence mani- 
fests itself in the spirit of inquiry, in the interest taken in a 
great variety of things, and in alertness of judgment, is much 
higher among the masses in the United States than anywhere 
else. This is certainly not owing to any superiority of the 
public school system in this country — or, if such superiority 
exists, not to that alone — but rather to the fact that in the 
United States the individual is constantly brought into inter- 
ested contact with a greater variety of things and is admitted 
to active participation in the exercise of functions which in 
other countries are left to the care of a superior authority. I 
have frequently been struck by the remarkable expansion of the 
horizon effected by a few years of American life, in the minds 
of immigrants who had come from someivhat benighted regions, 
and by the mental enterprise and keen discernment with which 
they took hold of problems to which, in their comparatively 
torpid condition in their native countries, they had never given 
thought. It is true that in the large cities with congested 
population, self-government as an educator does not always 
bring the most desirable results, partly owing to the circum- 
stance that government, in its various branches, is there 
further removed from the individual, so that he comes into 
contact with it and exercises his influence upon it only through 
various, and sometimes questionable, intermediary agencies 
which frequently exert a very demoralising influence." — Carl 
Schurz's Memoirs, II, 79. 

"Anglo-Saxon Superiority! Although we do not all ac- 
knowledge it, we all have to bear it, and we all dread it ; the 
apprehension, the suspicion, and sometimes the hatred provoked 
by V Anglais proclaim the fact loudly enough. We cannot 
go one step in the world toithout coming across the Anglo-Saxon. 
. . . He rules America by Canada and the United States ; Af- 



The Twentieth Century American 3 

rica by Egypt and the Cape ; Asia by India and Burmah ; 
Australasia by Australia and New Zealand ; Europe and 
the whole world, by his trade and industries and by his 
policy." — M. Edruond Demolins in Anglo-Saxon Superiority 
" A quoi tient la Superiority des Anglo-Saxons ? " 

" It may be asking too much, but if statesmanship could 
kindly arrange it, I confess I should like to see, before I die, a 
war in lohich Britain and the United States in a just quarrel 
might tackle the world. After that we should have no more 
difficulty about America. For if the Americans never forget 
an injury, they ever remember a service." — The late G. W. 
Steevens in Tlie Land of the Dollar. 



The Twentieth Century 
American 



CHAPTER I 
An Anglo-American Alliance 

The Avoidance of Entangling Alliances — What the Injunc- 
tion Meant — What it Cannot Mean To-day — The Interests of 
the United States, no less than those of England, Demand an 
Alliance — But Larger Interests than those of the Two Peoples 
are Involved — American Responsiveness to Ideals — The Great- 
est Ideal of All, Universal Peace : the Practicability of its At- 
tainment — America's Responsibility — Misconceptions of the 
British Empire — Germany's Position — American Susceptibili- 
ties. 

The American nation, for all that it is young and 
lacks reverence, still worships the maxims and rules 
of conduct laid down by the Fathers of the Republic; 
and among those rules of conduct, there is none the 
wisdom of which is more generally accepted by the 
people than that which enjoins the avoidance of " en- 
tangling alliances " with foreign Powers. But not only 
has the United States changed much in late years, but 
the world in its political relations and sentiments has 
changed also and the place of the United States has 
changed in it. That sacred instrument, the Constitu- 

5 



6 The Twentieth Century American 

tion itself, holds chiefly by virtue of what is new in it. 
"Whatever is unaltered, or is not interpreted in a sense 
quite other than the framers intended, is to-day com- 
paratively unimportant. It must be so. It would be 
impossible that any code or constitution drawn up to 
meet the needs of the original States, in the phase of 
civilisation and amid the social conditions which then 
prevailed, could be suited to the national life of a 
Great Power in the twentieth century. In internal af- 
fairs, there is hardly a function of Government, scarcely 
a relation between the different branches of the Gov- 
ernment itself, or between the Government and any of 
the several States, or between the Government and the 
people, which is not unlike what the framers of the 
Constitution intended or what they imagined that it 
would be. 

But it is in external affairs that the nation must find, 
indeed has found, the old rules most inadequate. The 
policy of non-association which was desirable, even 
essential, to the young, weak state, whose only pros- 
pect of safety lay in a preservation of that isolation 
which her geographical position made possible to 
her, is and must be impracticable in a World-Power. 
Within the last decade, the United States has stepped 
out from her solitude to take the place which right- 
fully belongs to her among the great peoples. By 
the acquirement of her colonial dependencies, still 
more by the inevitable exigencies of her commerce, 
she has chosen (as she had no other choice) to make 
herself an interested party in the affairs of all parts of 
the world. All the conditions that made the old policy 
best for her have vanished. 

A child is rightly forbidden by his nurse to make 



An Anglo-American Alliance 7 

acquaintance with other children in the street; but 
this child has grown to manhood and gone out into the 
world to seek — and has found — his fortune. The old 
policy of isolation has been cast aside, till nothing 
remains of it but a few old formulae which have no 
virtue — not even significance — now that all the condi- 
tions to which they applied are gone. The United 
States has been compelled to make alliances (some, as 
when she co-operated with the other Powers in China, 
of the most " entangling " kind), and still the old 
phrase holds its spell on the popular mind. 

The injunction was originally intended to prevent 
the young Kepublic from being drawn into the wars 
with which Europe at the time was rent, by taking 
sides with any one party against any other. It was 
levelled not against alliances, but against entanglements. 
It was framed, and wisely framed, to secure to the United 
States the peace and isolation necessary to her develop- 
ment. The isolation is no longer either possible or 
desirable, but peace remains both. The nation would 
in fact be living more closely up to the spirit of the in- 
junction by entering into an alliance which would se- 
cure peace and make entanglements impossible, than 
she is when she leaves herself and the world exposed 
to the constant menace of war, merely for the sake of 
seeming to comply with the letter of a maxim which is 
now meaningless. If Washington were alive to-day, it 
does not seem to me possible to doubt that he would 
favour a new English treaty, even though he might 
have more difficulty in compelling Congress to accept 
his views than he had once before. 

As the case stands, the United States may easily 
become involved in war with any one of the Great 



8 The Twentieth Century American 

Powers, no matter how pacific or benevolent her in- 
tentions may be. There are at least three Powers with 
which a trivial incident might precipitate a conflict at 
almost any time ; while the possibilities of friction 
which might develop into open hostilities with some 
one of the lesser states are almost innumerable. It is 
beside the question to say that the United States need 
have no fear of the result: indeed that very fact con- 
tributes largely to the danger. It is ever the man who 
can fight, and knows it, who gets into trouble. Every 
American who has lived much in the farther West 
knows that he who would keep clear of difficulties 
had best not carry a revolver. In its very self-confi- 
dence — a self -confide ace amply justified by its strength 
— the American people is, measured by the standards 
of other nations, an eminently bellicose people — much 
more bellicose than it supposes. 

Great Britain's alliance with Japan has with reason- 
able certainty, so far as danger of conflict between any 
two of the Great Powers is concerned, secured the 
peace of Asia for some time to come. The under- 
standing between Great Britain and France goes some 
way towards assuring the peace of Europe, of which 
the imminent rapprochement with Russia (which all 
thinking Englishmen desire ' ) will constitute a further 
guarantee. But an alliance between Great Britain and 
the United States would secure the peace of the world. 
There is but one European Power now which could 
embark on a war with either Great Britain or the 
United States with any shadow of justification for 
hopefulness as to the result; and no combination of 

1 Since this was written, the Anglo-Russian agreement has 
been arrived at. 



An Anglo-American Alliance 9 

Powers could deceive itself into believing that it could 
make bead against the two combined or would dare 
to disturb the peace between themselves when the 
two allies bade them be still. 

In the days of her youth, — which lasted up to the 
closing decade of the nineteenth century, — provided 
that she did not thrust herself needlessly into the 
quarrels of Europe, her mere geographical position 
sufficed to secure to America the peace which she 
required. The Atlantic Ocean, her own mountain 
chains and wildernesses, these were bulwarks enough. 
She has, by pressure of her own destiny, been com- 
pelled to come out from behind these safeguards to 
rub shoulders every day with all the world. If she 
still desires peace, she will be more likely to realise 
that desire by seeking other shields. Nor must any 
American reader misunderstand me, for I believe that 
I estimate the fighting power of the United States 
more highly than most native-born Americans. She 
needs no help in playing her part in the world ; but 
no amount of self-confidence, no ability to fight, if 
once the fight be on, will serve to protect her from 
having quarrels thrust upon her — not necessarily in 
wilfulness by any individual antagonist but by mere 
force of circumstance. Considered from the stand- 
point of her own expediency, an alliance with Great 
Britain would give to the United States an absolute 
guarantee that for as many years as she pleased she 
would be free to devote all her energies to the develop- 
ment of her own resources and the increase of her 
commerce. 

But there are other considerations far larger than 
that of her own expediency. This is no question of 



io The Twentieth Century American 

the selfish interests either of the United States or of 
Great Britain. There is no people more responsive 
than the American to high ideals. Englishmen often 
find it hard to believe that an American is not talking 
mere fustian when he gives honest expression to his 
sentiments ; but from the foundation of the Republic 
certain large ideas — Liberty, Freedom of Conscience, 
Equality — have somehow been made to seem very real 
things to the American mind. Whether the Englishman 
does not in his heart prize just as dearly as the Amer- 
ican the things which these words signify, is another 
matter ; it is not the Englishman's habit to formulate 
them even to himself, much less to talk about them to 
others. Most Englishmen have large sympathy with 
Captain Gamble who, bewailing the unrest in Canada 
at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, complained 
that the Colonials talked too much about " that damned 
absurd word Liberty." ' 

It is rarely that an English political campaign is 
fought for a principle or for an abstract idea, and 
equally rarely that in America the watchword on one 
side or the other is not some such high-sounding phrase 
as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true 
that behind that phrase may be clustered a cowering 
crowd of petty individual interests ; the fact remains 
that it is the phrase itself — the large Idea — on which 
orators and party managers rely to secure their hold 
on the imaginations of the mass of the people. It does 
not necessarily imply any superior morality on the 
part of the Americans ; but is an accident of the dif- 
ferent conditions prevailing in the two countries. 

> Justin H. Smith, Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony, 
Putnams, 1907. 



An Anelo-American Alliance n 



i & 



British politics are infinitely more complex than 
American, and foreign affairs play a much larger part 
in public controversies. The people of the United 
States have been throughout their history able to con- 
fine their attention almost wholly to their home affairs, 
and in those home affairs, the mere vastness of the 
country, with the diverse and conflicting interests of 
the various parts, has made it as a rule impossible to 
frame any appeal to the minds of the voters as a whole 
except in terms of some abstract idea. An appeal to 
the self-interests of the people in the aggregate in any 
matter of domestic policy is almost unformulable, 
because the interest of each section conflicts with the 
interest of others ; whence it has necessarily followed 
that the American people has grown accustomed to be 
led by large phrases — disciplined to follow the flag of 
an ideal. 

Not all the early colonists who emigrated, even to 
New England, went solely for conscience' sake. Un- 
der the cloak of the lofty principle for which the 
Revolutionary War was fought there were, again, 
concealed all manner of personal ambitions, sectional 
jealousies, and partisan intrigues. It was in truth (as 
more than one American historian has pointed out) 
a party strife and not a war of peoples. The pre- 
cipitating cause of the Civil War was not the desire 
to abolish slavery, but the bitterness aroused by the 
political considerations of the advantage given to 
one party or the other by the establishment or non- 
establishment of slavery in a new territory. The 
motive which impelled the United States to make 
war on Spain was not, as most Europeans believe, 
any desire for an extension of territory, any more than 



12 The Twentieth Century American 

it was, as some Americans would say, a yearning to 
avenge the blowing up of the Maine ; it was the neces- 
sity of putting an end to the disturbed state of affairs 
in Cuba, which was a constant source of annoyance, 
as well as of trouble and expense, to the United States 
Government. If a neighbour makes a disturbance 
before your house and brings his family quarrels to 
your doorstep, you must after a time ask him to stop ; 
and when, after a sufficient number of askings, he fails 
to comply with your request, it is justifiable to use 
force to make him. That was America's justification — 
the real ground on which she went to war with Spain. 
But the thing which actually inflamed the mind of the 
American people was the belief that the Spanish treat- 
ment of Cuba was brutal and barbarous. It was an 
indignation no less fine than that which set England 
in a blaze in the days of the Bulgarian atrocities. 
The war may been a war of expediency on the part of 
the Government ; it was a Crusade in the eyes of the 
people. Thus it may be easy to show that at each 
crisis in its history there was something besides the 
nobility of a Cause or the grandeur of a Principle 
which impelled the American nation on the course 
which it took, but it has always been love of the 
Cause or devotion to the Principle which has swayed 
the masses of the people. 

And this people now has it in its power to do an 
infinitely finer thing than ever it did when it estab- 
lished Liberty of Conscience, or founded a republic 
on broader foundations than had been laid before, 
or abolished slavery within its borders, or when it 
won Cuba's independence of what it believed to be 
an inhuman tyranny. I believe that it has it in its 



An Anglo-American Alliance 13 

power to do no less a thing than to abolish war for 
ever — to give to the peoples of the earth the blessing 
of Perpetual Peace. The question for it to ask itself 
is whether it can, with any shadow of justification, 
refuse to take this step and withhold this boon from 
humanity. 

If it does refuse and wars continue — if, within the 
coming decade, war should break out, whether actually 
involving the United States itself or not, more bloody 
and destructive than any that the world has seen — 
and if then the facts should be presented to posterity 
for judgment, — will the American people be held guilt- 
less ? It is improbable that the case ever could be so 
presented, for there is none to put the United States 
on trial, none to draw an indictment, none to prose- 
cute. The world has not turned to the United States 
to ask that it be saved ; no one has arisen to point at 
the United States and say, " Thou art the one to do 
this thing." The historians of another generation will 
have no depositions before them on which to base a 
verdict. But if the facts are as stated and the United 
States knows them to be so, does the lack of common 
knowledge of them make her responsibility any the 
less ? It remains that the nation has the power to do 
this, and it alone among nations. 

The first idea of most Americans, when a hard and 
fast alliance with Great Britain is suggested to them, 
usually formulates itself in the statement that they 
have no wish to be made into a cat's-paw for pulling 
England's chestnuts out of the fire. America has no 
desire to be drawn into England's quarrels. Until 
less than ten years ago, there was justification for the 



14 The Twentieth Century American 

point of view ; for while England seemed to be ever 
on the brink of war, the United States lived peacefully 
in her far-off Valley of Avilion. But the map of the 
world has changed, and while the United States has 
left her seclusion and come out to play her part in 
the world-politics, England has been buttressing her- 
self with friendships, until it is at least arguable 
whether the United States is not the more exposed 
to danger of the two. But it is no question now of 
being dragged into other people's quarrels ; but of 
making all quarrelling impossible. 

Again, the American will say that the United States 
needs no allies. She can hold her own ; let Great 
Britain do the same. And again I say that it is no 
question now of whether either Power can hold its 
own against the world or not. Great Britain, Ameri- 
cans should understand, has no more fear for herself 
than has the United States. England " does not seek 
alliances: she grants them." There is not only no 
single European Power, but there is no probable com- 
bination of European Powers, which England does not 
in her heart serenely believe herself quite competent 
to deal with. British pride has grown no less in the 
last three hundred years : 

" Come the four corners of the World in arms 
And we shall shock them." 

Americans should disabuse themselves finally of the 
idea that if England desires an alliance with the United 
States it is because she has any fear that she may need 
help against any other enemy. Englishmen are too 
well satisfied with themselves for that (with precisely 
the same kind of self-satisfaction as the United States 



An Anglo-American Alliance 15 

suffers from), and much too confident that, in what- 
ever may arise, it will be the other fellow who will 
need help. But if England has no misgiving as to 
her ability" to take care of herself when trouble comes, 
she is far from being ashamed to say that she would 
infinitely prefer that trouble should not come, either 
to her or to another, and she would join— oh, so 
gladly ! — with the United States (as for a partial at- 
tainment of the same end she has already joined with 
France on the one hand and with Japan on the other) 
to make sure that it should never come. Has the 
United States any right to refuse to enter into such an 
alliance — an alliance which would not be entangling, 
but which would make entanglements impossible? 

At Christmas time in 1906, the following suggestion 
was made in the London correspondence of an Amer- 
ican paper l : 

" The new ideals which mankind has set before itself, 
the infinitely larger enlightenment and education of the 
masses, the desperate struggle which every civilised 
people is waging against all forms of social suffering 
and vice within itself, the mere complexity of modern 
commerce with its all-absorbing interest — these things 
all cry aloud for peace. War does not belong to this 
phase of civilisation. Least of all can it have any 
appeal to the two peoples in whom the spirit of the 
Twentieth Century is most manifest Of all peoples, 
Great Britain and the United States have most cause 
to desire peace. 

" There should be a Christmas message sent from the 
White House which should run something like this : 

> The Bellman, Minneapolis, Dec. 22, 1906. 



1 6 The Twentieth Century American 

" To His Majesty King Edward the Seventh : 
" To your majesty, to her majesty the Queen, and to 
the people of the British empire, I desire to express 
the best wishes of myself and of the people of the 
United States. At the same time, I wish to assure your 
majesty that you will have both the sympathy and the 
practical support of the American people in such ac- 
tion as it may seem right to you and to the British 
people to take in the direction of securing to the nations 
of the world that peace of which your majesty has al- 
ways shown yourself so earnest an advocate. 

"(Signed), Theodore Roosevelt. 

" Some such an answer as this would be returned : 

" To His Excellency the President of the 
United States: 
" In acknowledging with gratitude the expression of 
good wishes to ourselves, to her majesty the Queen, and 
to the people of the British empire of yourself and the 
population of the United States, I desire most cordially 
to reciprocate the sentiments of good will. Even more 
cordially and gratefully, I acknowledge the assurance 
of sympathy and support of the great American people 
in action directed to securing peace to the nations of 
the world. It will be my immediate care to propose 
such a course of joint action between us as may secure 
that blessing to all peoples in the course of the coming 
year. 

" (Signed), Edward. 

" Does anybody doubt that, if the two nations bent 
themselves to the task in earnest, universal peace could 
be so secured to all the peoples of the earth in the 



An Anglo-American Alliance 17 

course of the coming year? And if it is in truth in 
their power to do this thing, how can either conceivably 
convince itself that it is not its duty ? 
"And what a Christmas the world would have in 1907 !" 

Does any one doubt it ? Does any one doubt that, 
if the two peoples were in earnest, though the thing 
might not be brought about in one year, it is far from 
improbable that it could be achieved in two years or 
three ? Since the paragraphs which I have quoted were 
published, a year has passed and for a large part of that 
year the Conference has been in session at The Hague ; 
and of the results of that Conference it is not easy for 
either an Englishman or an American to speak with 
patience. Does any one doubt that if the two Govern- 
ments had set themselves determinedly, from the 
beginning of the pourparlers, to reach the one definite 
goal those results might have been very different ? 

During the last few years, the two Powers, each act- 
ing in her own way, have done more to establish peace 
on earth than has been done by all the other Powers 
in all time ; and I most earnestly believe that it only 
needs that they should say with one voice that there 
shall be no more wars and there will be none. Nor 
am I ignoring the complexities of the situation ; but I 
believe that all the details, the first step once taken, 
would settle themselves with unexpected facility 
through the medium of international tribunals. Of 
course this will be called visionary : but whosoever is 
tempted so to call it, let him read history in the records 
of contemporary writers and see how visionary all great 
forward movements in the progress of the world have 
seemed until the time came when the thing was to be 



i8 The Twentieth Century American 

accomplished. What we are now discussing seems 
visionary because of its unfamiliarity. It has the for- 
midableness of the unknown. The impossible, once 
accomplished, looks simple enough in retrospect The 
fact is that never before has there been a time when 
boundaries all over the world have been so nearly es- 
tablished — when there were so few points outstanding 
likely to embroil any two of the Great Powers in con- 
flict — so few national ambitions struggling for appease- 
ment. It is easy not to realise this unless one studies 
the field in detail : easy to fail to see how near is the 
attainment of universal peace. 

The Councils of the Powers have in the past been so 
hampered by the traditions of a tortuous diplomacy, 
so tossed and perturbed within by the cross-currents 
of intrigue, that they have shown themselves almost 
childishly incapable of arriving at clear-cut decisions. 
Old policies, old formulae, old jealousies, old dynastic 
influences still hold control of the majority of the 
chancelleries of Continental Europe, and these things 
it is that have made questions simple in themselves 
seem complex and incapable of solution. But there is 
nothing to be settled involving larger territorial inter- 
ests or more beset with delicacies than many questions 
with which the Supreme Court of the United States 
has had to deal — none so large as to seem formidable 
to his Majesty's Privy Council or to the House of 
Lords. And under the guidance of Great Britain and 
the United States acting in unison, assured in advance 
of the sympathy of France and Japan and of whatever 
other Powers would welcome the new order of things, 
a Hague committee or other international tribunal 
could be made a businesslike organisation working 



An Anglo-American Alliance 19 

directly for results, — as directly as the board of direc- 
tors of any commercial corporation. And it is with those 
who consider this impracticable that the onus lies of 
pointing out the direction from which insuperable resist- 
ance is to be expected, — from which particular Powers 
in Europe, in Asia, or in Central or South America. 

The ultimate domination of the world by the Anglo- 
Saxon (let us call him so) seems to be reasonably as- 
sured ; and no less assured is it that at some time wars 
will cease. The question for both Englishmen and 
Americans to ask themselves is whether, recognising 
the responsibility that already rests upon it, the Anglo- 
Saxon race dare or can for conscience' sake — or still 
more, whether one branch of it when the other be 
willing to push on, dare or can for conscience' sake — 
hang back and postpone the advent of the Universal 
Peace, which it is in its power to bring about to-day, 
no matter what the motives of jealousy, of self-interest, 
or of self-distrust may be that restrain it. 

It has been assumed in all that has been said that 
the onus of refusal rests solely on the United States ; 
as indeed it does. Great Britain, it will be objected, 
has asked for no alliance. Nor has she. Great Britain 
does not put herself in the position of suing for a 
friendship which may be denied ; and is there any doubt 
that if Great Britain had at any time asked openly for 
such an alliance she would have been refused ? Would 
she not be bluntly refused to-day? Great men on 
either side — but never, be it noted, an Englishman ex- 
cept for the purpose of agreeing with an American 
who has already spoken — have said many times that 
a formal alliance is not desirable: that things are 
going well enough as they are and that it is best to 



20 The Twentieth Century American 

wait. Things are never going well enough, so long as 
they might go better. And these men who say it 
speak only with an eye to the interests of the two 
countries, not considering the greater stake of the hap- 
piness of the world at large ; and even so (I say it 
with deference) they know in their own minds that if 
indeed the thing should become suddenly feasible, 
neither they nor any thinking man, with the good of 
humanity at heart, would dare to raise a voice against 
it or would dream of doing other than rejoice. It is 
only because it has seemed impossible that it has been 
best to do without it ; and it is impossible only because 
the people of the United States have not yet realised 
the responsibilities of the new position which they hold 
in the councils of the world, but are still bound by the 
prejudices of the days of little things, still slaves — they 
of all people ! — to an old and outworn formula. They 
have not yet comprehended that within their arm's 
reach there lies an achievement greater than has ever 
been given to a nation to accomplish, and that they 
have but to take one step forward to enter on a destiny 
greater than anything foreshadowed even in the promise 
of their own wonderful history. 

And when those who would be their coadjutors are 
willing and waiting and beckoning them on, have they 
any right to hold back? Is it anything other than 
moral cowardice if they do ? 

I wish that each individual American would give 
one hour's unprejudiced study to the British Empire, 
— would sit down with a map of the world before him 
and, summoning to his assistance such knowledge of 
history as he has and bearing in mind the conditions 



An Anglo-American Alliance 21 

of his own country, endeavour to arrive at some idea 
of what it is that Englishmen have done in the world, 
what are the present circumstances of the Empire, 
what its aims and ambitions. I do not think that the 
ordinarily educated and intelligent American knows 
how ignorant he is of the nation which has played so 
large a part in the history of his own country and of 
which he talks so often and with so little restraint. 
The ignorance of Englishmen of America is another 
matter which will be referred to in its place. For the 
present, what is to be desired is that the American 
should get some elementary grasp of the character of 
Great Britain and her dependencies as a whole. 

In the first place it is worth pointing out that the 
Empire is as much bigger than the United States as 
the United States is bigger than the British Isles. I 
am not now talking of mere geographical dimensions, 
but of the political schemes of the two nations. Amer- 
icans commonly speak of theirs as a young coun- 
try — as the youngest of the Great Powers, — but in 
every true sense the British Empire is vastly younger. 
The United States has an established form of govern- 
ment which has been the same for a hundred years 
and, all good Americans hope, will remain unchanged 
for centuries to come. The British Empire is still 
groping inchoate : it is all makeshift and endeavour. 
It is in about that stage of growth in which the United 
States found herself when her transcontinental rail- 
ways were still unbuilt, when she had not yet digested 
Texas or California, and the greater part of the West 
remained unsettled and unsurveyed. 

If the American will look to the north, he will see 
Canada in approximately the phase in her material 



22 The Twentieth Century American 

progress which the United States had reached in, let us 
say, 1880 to 1885. Australia and New Zealand are 
somewhat further behind ; South Africa further still. 
Behind that again are the various scattered portions of 
the Over-Sea Dominions in divers states of political 
pupilhood. In some there are not even yet the founda- 
tions on which a Constitutional or commercial structure 
can be built. And while each unit has to be led or en- 
couraged along the path of individual development, 
beyond all is the great vision which every imperially- 
thinking Englishman sets before himself — the vision of 
a Federation of all the parts — a Federation not unlike 
that which the United States has enjoyed for over a 
hundred years (save that Englishmen hope that there 
will always be a monarchy at the centre) but which, as 
has been said, is almost incomparably larger in con- 
ception than was the Union of the States and requires 
correspondingly greater labour in its accomplishment. 

If the American will now consider the conditions of 
the growth of his own country, he will recognise that the 
only thing which made that growth possible was the fact 
that the people was undistracted by foreign complica- 
tions. The one great need of the nation was Peace. It 
was to attain this that the policy of non-entanglement 
was formulated. Without it, the people could not have 
devoted its energies with a single mind to the gigantic 
task of its own development. 

But the task before the British Empire is more gi- 
gantic ; the need of peace more urgent. It is more 
urgent, not merely in proportion to the additional 
magnitude and complexity of the task to be done, but 
is thrice multiplied by the conditions of the modern 
world. The British Empire must needs achieve its 



An Anglo-American Alliance 23 

industrial consolidation in the teeth of a commercial 
competition a thousand times fiercer than anything 
which America knew in her young days. The United 
States grew to greatness in a secluded nursery. Great 
Britain must bring up her children in the streets and 
on the high seas, under the eyes and exposed to the 
seductions of the peoples of all the world. 

The American is a reasoning being. A much larger 
portion of the American people is habituated to reason 
for itself — to think independently — to form and to 
abide by its individual judgment — than of any other 
people in the world. No political fact is more familiar 
to the American people than the immense advantage 
which it derived, during the period of its internal 
development, from its enjoyment of external peace. 
Will not the American people, then, reasoning from 
analogy, believe that, under more compelling condi- 
tions, England also earnestly desires external peace? 

I can almost hear the retort leaping to the lips of the 
American reader who holds the traditional view of the 
British Empire. " It is all very well for you to talk of 
peace now ! " I hear him say. " Now that the world is 
pretty well divided up and you have grabbed the 
greater part of it. You have n't talked much of peace 
in the past." And here we are confronted at once with 
the fundamental misconception of the British Empire 
and the British character which has worked deplorable 
harm in the American national sentiment towards 
England. 

First, it is worth remarking that with the exception 
of the Crimean War (which even the most prejudiced 
American will not regard as a war of aggression or as 
a thing for which England should be blamed) Great 



24 The Twentieth Century American 

Britain has not been engaged in hostilities with any 
European Power since the days of Napoleon. Nor can 
it be contended that England's share in the Napoleonic 
wars was of England's seeking. Since then, if she has 
avoided hostilities it has not been for lack of oppor- 
tunity. The people which, with Britain's intricate 
complexity of interests, amid all the turmoils and jeal- 
ousies of Europe, has kept the peace for a century can 
scarcely have been seeking war. 

And again the American will say : " That 's all 
right; I am not talking of Europe. You've been 
fighting all over the world all the time. There 
has never been a year when you have not been 
licking some little tin -pot king and freezing on to 
his possessions." 

Americans are rather proud — justly proud — of the 
way in which their power has spread from within the 
narrow limits of the original thirteen States till it has 
dominated half a continent. It has, indeed, been a 
splendid piece of work. But what the American is 
loth to acknowledge is that that growth was as truly a 
colonising movement — a process of imperial expansion 
— as has been the growth of the British Empire. Of 
late years, American historical writers have been 
preaching this fact ; but the American people has not 
grasped it. Moreover there were tin-pot kings already 
ruling America. Sioux, Nez Perce\ or Cree— Zulu, 
Ashanti, or Burmese: the names do not matter. And 
when the expansive energy of the American people 
reached the oceans, it could no more stop than it could 
stop at the Mississippi. Hawaii, the Philippines, and 
Puerto Rico were as inevitable as Louisiana and Texas. 
And the acquisition of the two last-named was pre- 



An Anglo-American Alliance 25 

cisely as imperial a process as the acquisition of the 
others. It is only the leap over-seas that, quite illogi- 
cally, gives the latter, to American eyes, a different 
seeming. It matters not whether you vault a boun- 
dary pillar on the plain, a river, a mountain barrier, or 
seven thousand miles of sea-water. The process is the 
same. Nor in any of the cases was the forward move- 
ment other than commendable and inevitable. It 
was the necessary manifestation of the unrestrainable 
centrifugal impulse of the Anglo-Saxon. 

The impulse which sent the first English colonists 
to North America sent them also to Australia, to India 
and the uttermost parts of the earth. The same im- 
pulse drove the American colonists westward, north- 
ward, southward, in whatever direction they met no 
restraining force equal to their own expansive energy. 
It drove them to the Pacific, to the Rio Grande, to the 
Sault Ste. Marie ; and it has driven them over oceans 
into the Arctic Circle, to the shores of Asia, down the 
Caribbean. And as it drove them it drove also those 
Englishmen who were left at home and they too spread 
on all lines of least resistance. But no American (I 
have never met one, though I must have talked on the 
subject to hundreds) will agree that the dispersal of the 
Englishmen left at home was as legitimate, as necessary, 
and every whit as peaceful as the dispersal of those 
Englishmen who went first and made their new home 
in America. 

With the acquisition of over-sea dominions of their 
own, many Americans are coming to comprehend some- 
thing of the powerlessness of a great people in the grip 
of its destiny. They are also beginning to understand 
that the ruling and civilising of savage and alien peoples 



26 The Twentieth Century American 

is not either all comfort or all profit. If Americans 
were given the option to-day to take more Philippines, 
would they take them? Great Britain has been fa- 
miliar with her Philippines for half a century and more. 
Does America suppose that she also did not learn her 
lesson? Will not Americans understand with what 
utter reluctance she has been compelled again and again 
to take more? Some day Americans will come to be- 
lieve that England no more desired to annex Burmah 
than the United States deliberately planned to take the 
Philippines; that Englishmen were as content to leave 
the Transvaal and the Orange Free State alone as 
ever Americans were to be without Hawaii or Puerto 
Rico. Egypt was forced upon Great Britain precisely 
as Cuba is being foisted on America to-day — and every 
Englishman hopes that the United States will be able 
to do as much for the Cubans as Great Britain has done 
for the Egyptians. 

Great Britain would always vastly prefer — has al- 
ways vastly preferred — to keep a friendly independent 
state upon her borders rather than be compelled to 
take over the burden of administration. The former 
involves less labour and more profit ; it retains more- 
over a barrier between the British boundaries and 
those of any potentially hostile Power upon the other 
side. England has shown this in India itself and in 
Afghanistan. She tried to show it in South Africa. 
She has shown it in Thibet. More conclusively than 
anywhere perhaps she has shown it in the Federated 
Malay States — of which probably but few Americans 
know even the name, but where more, it may be, 
than anywhere are Englishmen working out their 
ambition— 



An Anglo-American Alliance 27 

" To make the world a better place 
Where'er the English go." 

It might happen that, under a weak and incompetent 
successor to President Diaz, Mexico would relapse into 
the conditions of half a century ago and the situation 
along the border be rendered intolerable to Americans. 
Sooner or later the United States would be compelled 
to protest and, protests being unheeded, to interfere. 
The incompetence of the Mexican Government con- 
tinuing, America would be obliged to establish a pro- 
tectorate, if not over the whole country, at least over 
that portion the orderly behaviour of which was neces- 
sary to her own peace. Thereafter annexation might 
follow. Now, at no stage of this process would English- 
men, looking on, accuse the United States of greediness, 
of bullying, or of deliberately planning to gratify an 
earth-hunger. They, from experience, understand. But 
when the same thing occurs on the British frontiers in 
Asia or South Africa, Americans make no effort to 
understand. "England is up to the same old game," 
they say. " One more morsel down the lion's throat." 

I am well aware of the depth of the prejudice against 
which I am arguing. The majority of Americans are 
so accustomed to consider their own expansion across the 
continent, and beyond, as one of the finest episodes in 
the march of human progress (as it is) and the growth 
of the British Empire as a mere succession of wanton 
and brutal outrages on helpless and benighted peoples, 
that the immediate impulse of the vast majority of 
American readers will be to treat a comparison between 
the two with ridicule. Minnesota Massacres and the In- 
dian Mutiny — Cetewayo and Sitting Bull — Aguinaldo 



28 The Twentieth Century American 

and the Mahdi — Egypt and Cuba ; the time will 
come when Americans will understand. It is a pity 
that prejudice should blind them now. 

And if the American reader will refer to the map, 
which presumably lies open before him, he might con- 
sider in what part of the world it is that England is now 
bent on a policy of aggression — where it is that collision 
with any Power threatens. In Asia ? England's course 
in regard to Afghanistan and Thibet surely shows that 
she is content with her present boundaries, while her 
alliance with Japan and the rapprochement with Russia 
at which she aims should be evidences enough of her 
desire for peace ! In Africa ? Where is it that spheres 
of influence are not delimited? That there will be dis- 
turbances, ferments, which will have to be suppressed 
at one time and another at various points within the 
British sphere is likely — as likely as it was that similar 
disturbances would occur in the United States so long 
as any considerable number of Indians went loose un- 
blanketed, — but what room is left for anything ap- 
proaching serious war? With the problem of the 
mixture of races and the necessity of building up the 
structure of a state, does not England before all things 
need peace both in the south and north ? In America? 
In Australia? With whom? That perils may arise 
at almost any point — in mid-ocean even, far away from 
any land — of course we recognise ; but Americans can 
hardly fail to see, with the map before them, that Eng- 
land cannot seek them, but must earnestly desire to 
avoid them as she has avoided them with any European 
Power for this last century. To borrow a happy phrase, 
Great Britain is in truth a "Saturated Power." She 
has been compelled to shoulder burdens which she 



An Anglo-American Alliance 29 

would feign have avoided, to assume obligations which 
were not of her creating and which she fulfils with re- 
luctance. And she can assume no more, or, if she must, 
will do it only with the utmost unwillingness. What 
she needs is peace. 

And now one must go as delicately as is compatible 
with making one's meaning clear. 

"/ There is one Power in Europe whose ambitions are 
a menace to the peace of the world — one only. I do 
not think that Americans as a rule understand this, 
but it is true and there can be no harm in saying so, 
for neither in her press nor in the mouths of her 
statesmen are those ambitions denied by that Power 
herself. Indeed they are insisted on to the taxpayer 
as the reason why she needs so powerful an army and 
a fleet. It is not suggested that Germany's ambitions 
are other than legitimate and inevitable : it would be 
difficult for either Englishman or American to say 
that with grace. I am not arguing against Germany ; 
I am arguing for Peace. 

Germany says frankly enough that she is cooped up 
within boundaries which are intolerable — that she is 
an "imprisoned Power." She argues, still with perfect 
frankness, that it was a mere accident that, to her mis- 
fortune, she came into being as a great Power too late 
to be able to get her proper share of the earth's surface, 
wherein her people might expand and put forth their 
surplus energy. The time when there was earth's 
surface to choose was already gone. But that fact has 
in no way lessened the need of expansion or destroyed 
the energy. She must burst her prison walls, she 
says. It would have been better could she have 



so The Twentieth Century American 

flowed out quietly iuto unoccupied land — as the United 
States has done and as Great Britain has done — but 
that being impossible, she must flow where she can. 
And ringed around her are other Powers, great or 
small, which bar her way. Therefore she needs the 
army and the fleet. It is logical and it is candid. 

It is evident that the Franco-Eussian Alliance makes 
the bursting of her banks difficult in what might seem 
to be the most natural direction. The Anglo-French 
entente and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance — perhaps 
even more Germany's own partnership in the Triple 
Alliance with Italy and Austria — also constitute ob- 
stacles which at least necessitate something more of 
an army and more of a fleet than might otherwise 
have been sufficient for her purpose. But those bar- 
riers are not in the long run going to avert the ful- 
filment of — or at least the endeavour to fulfil — that 
purpose. 

There is only one instrumentality, humanly speak- 
ing, — one Power, — which can ultimately prevent Ger- 
many from using that army and that fleet for the ends 
for which they are being created ; and that instru- 
mentality happens to be the United States. It is 
difficult to see how Germany can make any break for 
freedom without coming in conflict not only with one 
of the Great Powers but with a combination of two or 
more. It is improbable that she will attempt the 
enterprise without at least the benevolent neutrality 
of the United States. Assurances of positive sym- 
pathy would probably go a long way towards en- 
couraging her to the hazard. But if the United States 
should range herself definitely on the side of peace 
the venture would become preposterous. 



An Anglo-American Alliance 31 

I am not arguing against Germany ; I am arguing 
for Peace. Least of all am I arguing for an American 
alliance for England in the event of Germany's dash 
for liberty taking an untoward direction. England 
needs no help. What does need help is Peace — the 
Peace of Europe — the Peace of the "World. 

There is no talk now of stifling Germany's ambi- 
tions : of standing in the way of her legitimate aspira- 
tions. It may be that under other conditions, under 
a different form of government, or even under another 
individual ruler, those aspirations and ambitions would 
not appear to the German people so vital as they do 
now. They certainly do not appear so to an outsider; 
and the German people is far from being of one mind 
on the subject. But assuming the majority of Germans 
to know their own business best, and granting it to be 
essential that the people should have some larger 
sphere, under their own flag, in which to attain to their 
proper growth, if they were compelled to drop war as 
the means for obtaining that larger sphere out of their 
calculations, it would not mean that those ambitions 
and aspirations would have to go unsatisfied. Violence 
is not the only means of obtaining what one wants. 

There was a time when, as between individuals, if 
one man desired a thing which his neighbour possessed 
he went with a club and took it ; but civilised society 
has abandoned physical force as a medium for the 
exchange of commodities and has substituted barter. 
If physical force were once discountenanced among 
nations, any nation which needed a thing badly enough 
could always get it. Everybody who had facilities 
for sale would be glad to sell, if the price was suffi- 
ciently high. It is not unlikely that, in an age of 



32 The Twentieth Century American 

compulsory peace, Germany would be able to acquire 
all that she desires at a less price than the expenditure 
of blood and treasure which would be necessary in a 
war. It would almost certainly cost her less than the 
price of war added to the capitalised annual burden of 
the up-keep of her army and navy. 1 

But the real cost of war does not fall upon the indi- 

1 A point which there is no space to dwell upon here but 
which I would commend to the more leisurely consideration of 
readers — especially American readers — is that under a regime 
of physical force there can in fact be hardly any transfer of 
commodities at all. What a man has, he holds, whether his 
need of it be greater than another's, or whether he needs it not 
at all. There is no inducement to part with it and pride com- 
pels him to hold ; so that only the strongest can come by the 
possession of anything that he desires. If the dollar were sub- 
stituted for the club in the dealings of nations, the transfer of 
commodities would forthwith become simplified, and such in- 
cidents as the purchase of Alaska and the cession of Heligo- 
land, instead of standing as isolated examples of international 
accommodation, would become customary. To take an example 
which will bring the matter home at once, many imperialist 
Englishmen on visiting the West Indies have become convinced 
that certain of England's possessions in those regions could 
with advantage to all parties be transferred to the United 
States. But so long as the military idea reigns — so long as an 
island must be regarded primarily as an outpost, a possible 
naval base, a strategic point — so long will the obstacles to such 
a transfer remain. As soon as war was put outside the range 
of possibilities, commercial principles would begin to operate 
and those territories, however much or little they might be 
worth, would be acquired by the United States. The same 
thing would happen in all parts of the world. Possessions, in- 
stead of being held by those who could hold them, would tend 
to pass to those who needed them or to whom they logically 
belonged by geographical relation, and neither Germany's 
legitimate aspirations nor those of any other country would 
need to go unsatisfied. 



An Anglo-American Alliance 33 

vidual nation. And for the last time let me say that 
I am not arguing against Germany : I am arguing for 
Peace. It has been necessary to discuss Germany's 
position because she is at the moment the only factor 
in the situation which makes for war. All other 
Powers are satisfied, or could be satisfied, with their 
present boundaries. Outside of the German Empire, 
the whole civilised world earnestly desires peace. It 
may be that Great Britain, acting in concert with 
France, Russia, and Japan, will in the near future be 
able to take a longer step towards securing that peace 
for the world than seems at present credible. But 
England's natural coadjutor is the United States. The 
United States has but to take one step and the thing is 
done. It is a role which ought to appeal to the Ameri- 
can people. It is certainly one for the assumption of 
which all posterity would bless the name of America. 

Critics will, of course, ridicule this offhand dismiss- 
ing in a few sentences of the largest of world problems. 
Each one of several propositions which I have ad- 
vanced breaks rudely ground where angels might fear 
to tread ; each one ought to be put forth cautiously 
with much preamble and historical introduction, to be 
circuitously argued through several hundred pages ; 
but that cannot be done here, because those proposi- 
tions are not the main topic of this book. At the same 
time they must be stated, however baldly, because they 
represent the basis on which my plea for any im- 
mediate Anglo-American co-operation in the cause of 
peace must rest. 

I am also fully conscious of the hostility which 
almost everything that I say will provoke from one or 



34 The Twentieth Century American 

another section of the American people, but I am not 
addressing the irreconcilables of any foreign element 
of the population of the United States. I am talking 
to the reasoning, intelligent mass of the two peoples as 
a whole. The subject of an Anglo-American alliance 
is one of which it is the fashion to hush up any at- 
tempt at the discussion in public. It must be spoken 
of in whispers. It is better — so the argument runs 
— to let American good-will to England grow of it- 
self; an effort to hasten it will but hurt American 
susceptibilities. 

In the first place this idea rests largely on an exag- 
gerated estimate of the power of the Irish politician, a 
power which happily is coming every day to be more 
nearly a thing of the past, — " tending," as Carlyle 
says, " visibly not to be." In the second place, I be- 
lieve that I understand American susceptibilities; and 
they will not be hurt by any one who shows that he 
does understand. What the American resents bitterly 
is the arrogant and superficial criticism of the foreigner 
who sums up the characteristics and destiny of the 
nation after a few weeks of observation. Moreover 
Americans do not as a rule like whispering or the at- 
tempt to come at things by by-paths — in which they 
much resemble the English. When they want a thing 
they commonly ask for it — distinctly. When they 
think a thing ought to be done they prefer to say so — 
unequivocally. They have not much love for the cir- 
cuitousnesses of diplomacy; and if England desires 
American co-operation in what is a great and noble 
cause she had much better ask for it — bluntly. 

Personally I wish that forty million Englishmen 
would stand up and shout the request all at once. 



CHAPTER II 
The Difference in Point of View 

The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness — How Frenchmen and 
Germans View it — Englishmen, Americans, and " Foreigners " 
— An Echo of the War of 1812 — An Anglo-American Conflict 
Unthinkable — American Feeling for England — The Venezue- 
lan Incident — The Pilgrims and Some Secret History — Why 
Americans still Hate England — Great Britain's Nearness to 
the United States Geographically — Commercially — Histori- 
cally — England's Foreign Ill-wishers in America. 

The one thing chiefly needed to make both Eng- 
lishmen and Americans desire an alliance is that they 
should come to know each other better. They would 
then be astonished to find not only how much they 
liked each other, but how closely each was already in 
sympathy with the other's ways of life and thought 
and how inconsiderable were the differences between 
them. Some one (I thought it was Mr. Freeman, but 
I cannot find the passage in his writings) has said that 
it would be a good way of judging an Englishman's 
knowledge of the world to notice whether, on first visit- 
ing America, he was most struck by the differences 
between the two peoples or by their resemblances. 
When an intelligent American has travelled for any 
time on the Continent of Europe, in contact with 
peoples who are truly " foreign " to him, he feels on 
arriving in London almost as if he were at home again. 

35 



36 The Twentieth Century American 

The more an Englishman moves among other peoples, 
the more he is impressed, on reaching the United 
States, with his kinship to those among whom he finds 
himself. Nor is it in either case wholly, or even 
chiefly, a matter of a common speech. 

"Jonathan,'" says Max O'Rell, " is but John Bull ex- 
panded — John Bull with plenty of elbow room. " And 
the same thing is said again and again in different 
phraseology by various Continental writers. It is said 
most impressively by those who do not put it into 
words at all, as by Professor Miinsterberg ' who is ap- 
parently not familiar with England, but shows no lack 
of willingness to dislike her. There is therefore no 
intentional comparison between the two peoples, but 
the writer's point of view has absorbing interest to an 
Englishman who knows both countries. More than 
once he remarks with admiration or astonishment on 
traits of the American character or institutions in the 
United States which the Englishman would necessarily 
take for granted, because they are precisely the same 
as those to which he has been accustomed at home. 
Writing for a German public, the Professor draws 
morals from American life which delight an English 
reader by their naive and elementary superfluousness. 
In all unconsciousness, Professor Miinsterberg has writ- 
ten a most valuable essay on the essential kinship of 
the British and American peoples as contrasted with his 
own. 

Two brothers will commonly be aware only of the 
differences between them — the unlikeness of their fea- 
tures, the dissimilarities in their tastes or capabilities, 
— yet the world at large may have difficulty in distin- 

1 The Americans, by Hugo Miinsterberg, 1905. 



The Difference in Point of View 37 

guishing them apart. While they are conscious only 
of their individual differences, to the neighbours all 
else disappears in the family resemblance. So it is that 
Max O'Kell sees how like the American is to the 
Englishman more clearly than Mark Twain: Professor 
Miinsterberg has involuntarily traced the features of 
the one in the lineaments of the other with a surer 
hand than Matthew Arnold or Mr. Bryce. 

When, in his remarkable book, M. Demolins uses the 
term Anglo-Saxon, he speaks indifferently at one time 
of Englishmen and at another of Americans. The 
peoples are to him one and indistinguishable. Their 
greatness is a common greatness based on qualities 
which are the inheritance of their Anglo-Saxon origin. 
Chief among these qualities, the foundation-stone of 
their greatness, is the devotion to what we will follow 
him in calling the " Particularistic " form of society, — 
a society, that is, in which the individual predominates 
over the community, and not the community over the 
individual ; a society which aims at " establishing each 
child in its full independence." This is, a Frenchman 
sees, eminently characteristic of the English and the 
Americans, in contrast with other peoples, with those 
which hold a republican form of government no less 
than those which live under an autocracy. And it is 
peculiarly Saxon in its origin, — not derived from the 
Celt or Norman or Dane. These latter belonged (as 
do the peoples sprung from, or allied to, them to-day) 
to that class of people which places the community 
above the individual, which looks instinctively to the 
State or the government for initiative. The Saxons 
alone (a people of earnest individual workers, agricul- 
turalists and craftsmen) relied always on the initiative 



38 The Twentieth Century American 

and impulse of the individual — what M. Demolins 
calls " the law of intense personal labour " — and it was 
by virtue of this quality that they eventually won so- 
cial supremacy over the other races in Britain. It is by 
virtue of the same quality that the Americans have 
been enabled to subdue their continent and build up 
the fabric of the United States. It is this quality, says 
the French writer almost brutally, which makes the 
German and Latin races to-day stand to L 'Anglais in 
about the same relation as the Oriental and the Red- 
skin stand to the European. And when M. Demolins 
speaks of UAilglais, he means the American as much 
as the "Englishman of Britain." It is a convenient 
term and, so essentially one are they in his eyes, 
there is no need to distinguish between the peoples. 
Mr. William Archer's remark is worth quoting, that 
" It is amazing how unessential has been the change 
produced in the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament 
[in America] by the influences of climate or the 
admixtures of foreign blood." l 

When individual Englishmen and Americans are 
thrown together in strange parts of the world, they 
seldom fail to foregather as members of one race. 
There may be four traders living isolated in some re- 
mote port ; but though the Russian may speak English 
with less " accent" than the American and though the 
German may have lived for some years in New York, 
it is not to the society of the German or the Russian 
that the American or the Englishman instinctively 

1 America To-day, by William Archer (1900). Mr. Archer's 
study of the American people is in my opinion the most sym- 
pathetic and comprehending which has been written by an 
Englishman. 



The Difference in Point of View 39 

turns for companionship. The two former have but the 
common terms of speech ; the Englishman and the 
American use also common terms of thought and feeling. 

The people who know this best are the officers and 
men of the British and American navies, who are ac- 
customed to find themselves thrown with the sailors 
of all nations in all sorts of waters ; and wherever they 
are thus thrown together, the men who sail under the 
Stars and Stripes and those who fly the Union Jack 
are friends. I have talked with a good many British 
sailors (not officers) and it is good to hear the tone of 
respect in which they speak of the American navy, as 
compared with certain others. 

The opportunities for similar 'companionship among 
the men of the armies of the two nations are fewer, 
but when the allied forces entered China the comrade- 
ship which arose between the American and British 
troops, to the exclusion of all others, is notorious. 
Every night after mess, British officers sought the 
American lines and vice versa. The Americans have 
the credit of having invented that rigorous develop- 
ment of martial law, by which, as soon as British offi- 
cers came within their lines, sentries were posted with 
orders not to let them pass out again unless accom- 
panied by an American officer. Thus the guests could 
not escape from hospitality till such hour as their hosts 
pleased. 

Some ten years ago military representatives of vari- 
ous nations were present by invitation at certain 
manoeuvres of the Indian army, and one night, when 
an official entertainment was impending, the United 
States officers were guests at the mess of a British 
regiment. Dinner being over, the colonel pushed his 



4o The Twentieth Century American 

chair back and, turning to the American on his right, 
said in all innocence : 

"Well, come along! It's time to go and help to 
receive these d d foreigners." 

An incident less obviously a, propos, but which 
seems to me to strike very truly the common chord of 
kinship of character between the races, was told me by 
a well-known American painter of naval and military 
subjects. He was the guest of the Forty-fourth (Essex) 
at, I think, Gibraltar, when in the course of dinner the 
British officer on his right broke a silence with the 
casual remark : 

" I wonder whether we shall ever have another 
smack at you fellows." 

The American was not unnaturally surprised. 

" Why ? Do you want it ? " he asked. 

" No ; we should hate to fight you of course, but 
then, you know, the Forty-fourth was at New Orleans." 

It appealed to the American — not merely the pride 
in the regiment that still smarted under the blow of 
ninety years ago, but still more the feeling towards 
himself, as an American, that prompted the English- 
man to speak in terms which he knew that he would 
never have dreamed of using under similar circum- 
stances to the representative of any "foreign" nation. 
The Englishman had no fear that the American would 
misunderstand. It appealed to the latter so much that 
after his return to the United States, being called upon 
to speak at some entertainment or function at West 
Point, when, besides the cadets, there were many offi- 
cers of the United States Army in the room, he told 
the story. Instantly, as he finished, a simultaneous 
cry from several places in the hall called for " Three 



The Difference in Point of View 41 

cheers for the Forty-fourth ! " There was no English- 
man in the company, but, as he told me the story, 
never had he heard so instantaneous, so crashing a 
response to any call, as then when the whole room 
leaped to its feet and cheered the old enemies who had 
not forgotten. 1 

It is not my wish here to discuss even the pos- 
sibility of war between Great Britain and the United 
States. The thing is too horrible to be considered as 
even the remotest of contingencies — the " Unpardon- 
able War," indeed, as Mr. James Barnes has called it. 
None the less, there is always greater danger of such 
a war than any Englishman imagines or than many 
Americans would like to confess. However true it 
may be that it takes two to make a quarrel, it is none 
the less true that if one party be bent upon quarrelling 
it is always possible for him to go to lengths of irritation 

1 The battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812, is not 
one of those incidents in English history which Englishmen 
generally insist on remembering, and it may be as well to 
explain to English readers that it was on that occasion that an 
inferior force of American riflemen (a " backwoods rabble" a 
British officer called them before the engagement) repulsed 
a British attack, from behind improvised earthworks, with a 
loss to the attacking force of 3300 killed and wounded, and at 
a cost to themselves of 13 wounded and 8 killed — or 21 casual- 
ties in all. Of the Forty-fourth (Essex) Regiment 816 men 
went into action, and after less than thirty minutes 134 were 
able to line up. The Ninety-third (Sutherland) Highlanders 
suffered even more severely. Of 1008 officers and men only 
132 came out unhurt. The battle was fought after peace had 
been concluded, so that the lives were thrown away to no pur- 
pose. The British had to deliver a direct frontal attack over 
level ground, penned in by a lake on one side and a swamp on 
the other. It was the same lesson, in even bloodier characters, 
as was taught on several occasions in South Africa, 



42 The Twentieth Century American 

and insult which must ultimately provoke the most 
peaceful and reluctant of antagonists. However 
pacific and reluctant to fight Great Britain might be 
at the outset, she is not conspicuously lacking in 
national pride or in sensitiveness to encroachments 
on the national honour. 

Mr. Freeman makes the shrewd remark that "the 
American feels a greater distinction between himself 
and the Englishman of Britain than the Englishman 
of Britain feels between himself and the American," 
which remains entirely true to-day, in spite of the 
seemingly paradoxical fact that the American knows 
more of English history and English politics than the 
Englishman knows of the politics and history of 
the United States. This by no means implies that 
the American knows more of the English character 
than the Englishman knows of his. On the contrary, 
the Americans have seen infinitely less of the world 
than Englishmen, and however many of the bare facts 
of English history and English politics they may 
know, they are strangely ignorant of the atmosphere 
to which those facts belong, and have never learned 
how much more foreign to them other foreign nations 
are. The individual American will take the individual 
Englishman into his friendship — will even accept him 
as a sort of a relative — but as a political entity Great 
Britain is almost as much a foreign nation as any. 

The casual Englishman visiting the United States 
for but a short time will probably not discover this 
fact. He only knows that he is cordially received 
himself — even more cordially, he feels, than he de- 
serves — and most probably those persons, especially 
the ladies, whom he meets will assure him that they 



The Difference in Point of View 43 

are " devoted " to England. He may not have time 
to discover that that devotion is not universal. Only 
after a while, in all probability, will the fact as stated 
by Mr. Freeman dawn upon him, and he will somehow 
be aware that with all the charming hospitality that 
he receives he is in some way treated as more of a 
foreigner than he is conscious of being. It is necessary 
that he should have some extended residence in the 
country — unless his visit happens to coincide with 
such an incident as the Venezuelan controversy or the 
outbreak of the Boer War — before things group them- 
selves in at all their right perspective before his eyes. 
The intensity of the feeling displayed at the time of 
the Venezuelan incident came as a shock to English- 
men at home ; but those who had lived for any length 
of time in America (west of New York) were not sur- 
prised. It is probable that the greater number of the 
American people at that time wished for war, and 
believed that it was nothing but cowardice on the 
part of Great Britain — her constitutional dislike of 
fighting anybody of her own size, as a number of the 
papers pleasantly phrased it — that prevented their 
wish from being gratified. 

The concluding paragraphs of ex-President Cleve- 
land's treatise on this subject are illuminating. In 
1895, as I have said, a majority of the American 
people unquestionably wished to fight; but that nu- 
merical majority included perhaps a minority of the 
native-born Americans, a small minority certainly of 
the richer or more well-to-do among them, and an 
almost infinitesimal proportion of the best educated of 
the native-born. This is what Mr. Cleveland says : 

" Those among us who most loudly reprehended 



44 The Twentieth Century American 

and bewailed our vigorous assertion of the Monroe 
Doctrine were the timid ones who feared personal 
financial loss, or those engaged in speculation and 
stock-gambling, in buying much beyond their ability 
to pay, and generally in living by their wits [sic]. The 
patriotism of such people traverses exclusively the 
pocket nerve. . . . But these things are as nothing 
when weighed against the sublime patriotism and de- 
votion to their nation's honour exhibited by the great 
mass of our countrymen — the plain people of the 
land. . . . Not for a moment did their Government 
know the lack of their strong and stalwart support. 
... It [the incident] has given us a better place in 
the respect and consideration of the people of all 
nations, and especially of Great Britain ; it has again 
confirmed our confidence in the overwhelming pre- 
valence among our citizens of disinterested devotion 
to our nation's honour ; and last, but by no means least, 
it has taught us where to look in the ranks of our 
countrymen for the best patriotism." x 

Mr. Cleveland, now that he is no longer in active 
politics, holds, as he deserves, a secure place in the 
affections of the American people. But at the time 
when this treatise was published, he was a not impos- 
sible nominee of the Democratic party for another 
term as President ; and the " plain people of the land " 
have a surprising number of votes. Mr. Cleveland 
knows his own people and knows that with a large 
portion of them war with England would in 1895 
have been popular. It is significant also that he still 
thought it worth while to insist upon this fact at the 

1 Presidential Problems, by Grover Cleveland, p. 281 
(New York, 1904). 



The Difference in Point of View 45 

time when this treatise was given to the world in 
a volume ; and that was as late as 1904, very shortly 
before the Democratic party selected its nominee for 
the Presidential contest of that year. It is possible 
that if Mr. Cleveland had been that nominee instead of 
Justice Parker, one of the leading features of his cam- 
paign would have been a vigorous insistence on the 
Monroe Doctrine, as interpreted by himself, with 
especial reference to Great Britain. 

Englishmen are inclined (so far as they think about 
the matter at all) to natter themselves that the ill- 
feeling which blazed so suddenly into flame twelve 
years ago was more or less effectually quenched by 
Great Britain's assistance to the United States at the 
time of the Spanish War. Those Englishmen who 
watched the course of opinion in America at the time 
of the Boer War must have had some misgivings. It 
is evident that so good a judge as Mr. Cleveland be- 
lieved, as late as 1904, that hostility to Great Britain 
was still a policy which would commend itself to the 
" plain people of the land." 

It is true that the war fever in 1895 was stronger 
in the West than in the Eastern States. A traveller 
crossing the United States at that time would have 
found the idea of hostilities with England being treated 
as something of a joke in cultivated circles in New 
York, but among the people in general to the West 
of Buffalo and Pittsburg it was terrible earnest. A 
curious point, moreover, which I think I have never 
seen stated in England, is that many good men in the 
Democratic Party at that time stood by President 
Cleveland, though sincerely friendly to Great Britain ; 
the truth being that they did not believe that war with 



46 The Twentieth Century American 

England was seriously to be apprehended, while 
another Power was at the moment seeking to obtain 
a foothold in South America, for whose benefit a 
"vigorous assertion of the Monroe Doctrine" was 
much to be desired. The thunders of the famous 
message indeed were, in the minds of many excellent 
Americans in the East, directed not against Great 
Britain but against Germany. 

None the less it should be noted that it was in the 
hope of influencing the voters in a local election in 
New York that Mr. Hearst, as recently as in Novem- 
ber, 1907, thought it worth while to appeal to the 
" traditional hatred " of Great Britain. However little 
else Mr. Hearst may have to commend him, he cannot 
be said to be out of touch with the sentiments of the 
more ignorant masses of the people of New York. 
That he failed did not signify that he was mistaken as 
to the extent or intensity of the prejudice to which he 
appealed, but only that the cry was raised too late and 
too obviously as an electioneering trick in a campaign 
which was already lost. 

In spite of what happened during the Spanish War, 
in spite of every effort that England has made to 
convince America of her friendliness, in spite of the 
improvement which has taken place in the feelings of 
(what, without offence, I venture to call) the upper 
classes in America towards Great Britain, the fact still 
remains that, with a large portion of the people, war 
with England would be popular. 

That is, perhaps, to state the case somewhat brutally. 
Let me rather say that, if any pretext should arise, the 
minds of the masses of the American people could more 
easily be inflamed to the point of desiring war with Eng- 



The Difference in Point of View 47 

land than they could to the point of desiring war with 
any other nation. It is bitter to have to say it — horrible 
to think it. I know also that many Americans will not 
agree with me ; but I do not think that among them 
will be many of those whose business it is, either as 
politicians or as journalists, to be in touch with the 
sentiments of the people. 

Let me not be suspected of failing to attach sufficient 
importance to those public expressions of international 
amity which we hear so frequently, couched in such 
charming phraseology, at the dinners given by the 
Pilgrims, either in London or Isew York, and on similar 
occasions. The Pilgrims are doing excellent work, as 
also are other similar societies in less conspicuous ways. 
The fact has, I believe, never been published, but can 
be told now without indiscretion, that a movement was 
on foot some twelve years ago for the organisation of 
an Anglo-American League, on a scale much more 
ambitious than that of the Pilgrims or any other of the 
existing societies. Certain members of the British 
Ministry of the time had been approached and had 
welcomed the movement with cordiality, and the active 
support of a number of men of corresponding public 
repute in various parts of the United States had 
been similarly enlisted. It was expected (though I 
think the official request had not been made) that the 
Prince of Wales (now his Majesty King Edward VII.) 
would be the President of the English branch of 
the League, while ex-President Harrison was to have 
acted in a similar capacity in America. By a grim 
pleasantry of Fate, the letter from England conveying 
final and official information of the approval of the 
aforesaid Ministers, and arranging for the publication 



48 The Twentieth Century American 

of the first formal overture from the United States (for 
the movement was to be made to appear to emanate 
therefrom) arrived in America on the very day of the 
appearance — and readers will remember how totally 
unexpected the appearance was — of Mr. Cleveland's 
Venezuelan message. What would have been the 
effect upon the crisis which then ensued if the organi- 
sation of the League had been but a few weeks further 
advanced, is an interesting subject for speculation. 
That, after a year or two of preparation, the movement 
should have been beaten by so totally unforeseen a 
complication at, as it were, the very winning post, was 
a little absurd. Thereafter, the right moment for pro- 
ceeding with the organisation on the same lines never 
again presented itself. 

Englishmen must not make the mistake of attaching 
the same value to the nice things which are said by pro- 
minent Americans on public or semi-public occasions 
as they attach to similar utterances by Englishmen. 
It is not, of course, intended to imply that the American 
speakers are not individually sincere; but no American 
can act as the spokesman for his people in such a matter 
with the same authority as can be assumed by a pro- 
perly qualified Englishman. One of the chief manifest- 
ations of the characteristic national lack of the sentiment 
of reverence is the disregard which the American masses 
entertain for the opinions of their " leading " men, 
whether in public life or not. The English people is 
accustomed, within certain limits, to repose confidence 
in its leaders and to suffer them in truth to lead; so 
that a small handful of men can within limits speak for 
the English people. They can voice the public senti- 
ments, or, when they speak, the people will modify its 



The Difference in Point of View 49 

sentiments to accord with their utterances. There is 
no man or set of men who can similarly speak for the 
American people ; and no one is better aware of that 
fact than the American, however honoured by his 
countrymen, when he gives expression in London to 
the cordiality of his own feelings for Great Britain and 
expresses guardedly his conviction that a recurrence of 
trouble between the peoples will never again be possible. 
For one thing, public opinion is not centralised in 
America as it is in England. If not tot homines, at 
least tot civitates ; and each State, each class and com- 
munity, instinctively objects to any one presuming to 
speak for it (a prejudice based presumably on political 
tradition) except its own locally elected representative, 
and even he must be specifically instructed ad hoc. 

Only the good-humoured common-sense of British 
diplomacy prevented war at the time of the Venezuelan 
incident; and it may be that the same influence would 
be strong enough to prevent it again. But it is desira- 
ble that Englishmen should understand that just as 
they were astounded at the bitterness against them 
which manifested itself then, so they might be no less 
astounded again. It is, of course, difficult for English- 
men to believe. It must necessarily be hard to believe 
that one is hated by a person whom one likes. It hap- 
pens to be just as difficult for the mass of Americans 
(again I should like to say the lower mass) to believe 
that Englishmen as a whole really like them. In 1895, 
the American masses believed that England's attitude 
was the result of cowardice, pure and simple. Knowing 
their own feeling towards Great Britain, they neither 
could nor would believe that she was then influenced by 
a sincere and almost brotherly good-will — that, without 



50 The Twentieth Century American 

one shadow of fear, Englishmen refused to consider war 
with the United States as possible because it had never 
occurred to them that the United States was other than 
a friendly nation — barely by one degree of kinship 
farther removed than one of Great Britain's larger 
colonies. 

And this is the first great obstacle that stands in the 
way of a proper understanding between the peoples — 
not merely the fact that the American nation is so far 
from having any affection for Great Britain, but the 
fact that the two peoples regard each other so differ- 
ently that neither understands, or is other than reluct- 
ant to believe in, the attitude of the other. For the 
benefit of the English reader, rather than the American, 
it may be well to explain this at some length. 

The essential fact is that America, New York or 
Washington, has been in the past, and still is in only 
a slightly less degree, much farther from London than 
London is from New York or Washington. This is 
true historically and commercially — and geographi- 
cally, in everything except the mere matter of miles. 
The American for generations looked at the world 
through London, whereas when the Englishman turned 
his vision to New York almost the whole world 
intervened. 

Geographically, the nearest soil to the United States 
is British soil. Along the whole northern border of 
the country lies the Dominion of Canada, without, for 
a distance of some two thousand miles, any visible line 
of demarcation, so that the American may walk upon 
the prairie and not know at what moment his foot 
passes from his own soil to the soil of Great Britain. 



The Difference in Point of View 51 

One of the chief lines of railway from New York to 
Chicago passes for half its length over Canadian 
ground; the effect being precisely as if the English- 
man to go from London to Birmingham were to run 
for half the distance over a corner of France. A large 
proportion of the produce of the wheat-fields of the 
North-western States, of Minnesota and the two Da- 
kotas, finds its way to New York over the Canadian 
Pacific Eailway and from New York is shipped, pro- 
bably in British bottoms, to Liverpool. When the 
American sails outward from New York or other 
eastern port, if he goes north he arrives only at New 
foundland or Nova Scotia; if he puts out to south- 
ward, the first land that he finds is the Bermudas. If 
he makes for Europe, it is generally at Liverpool or 
Southampton that he disembarks. On his very thres- 
hold in all directions, lies land over which floats the 
Union Jack and the same flag flies over half the vessels 
in the harbours of his own coasts. 

It is difficult for the Englishman to understand how 
near Great Britain has always been to the citizen of 
the United States, for to the Englishman himself the 
United States is a distant region, which he does not 
visit unless of set purpose he makes up his mind to go 
there. He must undertake a special journey, and a 
long one, lying apart from his ordinary routes of 
travel. The American cannot, save with difficulty 
and by circuitous routes, escape from striking British 
soil whenever he leaves his home. It confronts him on 
all sides and bars his way to all the world. Is it to be 
wondered at that he thinks of Englishmen otherwise 
than as Englishmen think of him? 

Yet this mere matter of geographical proximity is 



52 The Twentieth Century American 

trivial compared to the nearness of Great Britain in 
other ways. 

Commercially — and it must be remembered how 
large a part matters of commerce play in the life and 
thoughts of the people of the United States — until re- 
cently America traded with the world almost entirely 
through Great Britain. It is not the produce of the 
Western wheat-fields only that is carried abroad in 
British bottoms, but the great bulk of the commerce of 
the United States must even now find its way to the 
outer world in ships which carry the Union Jack, and 
in doing so must pay the toll of its freight charges 
to Great Britain. If a New York manufacturer sells 
goods to South America itself, the chances are that 
those goods will be shipped to Liverpool and reshipped 
to their destination — each time in British vessels — and 
the payment therefor will be made by exchange on 
London, whereby the British banker profits only in 
less degree than the British ship-owner. In financial 
matters, New York has had contact with tho outer 
world practically only through London. Until recently, 
no great corporate enterprise could be floated in 
America without the assistance of English capital, so 
that for years the " British Bondholder," who, by the 
interest which he drew (or often did not draw) upon 
his bonds, was supposed to be sucking the life-blood 
out of the American people, has been, until the trusts 
arose, the favourite bogey with which the American 
demagogue has played upon the feelings of his audi- 
ences. Now, happily, with more wealth at home, 
animosity has been diverted to the native trusts. 

It is true that of late years the United States has 
been striking out to win a world-commerce of her own • 



The Difference in Point of View 53 

that by way of the Pacific she is building up a trade 
free, in part at least, from British domination ; that she 
is making earnest efforts to develop her mercantile ma- 
rine, so that her own commerce may in some fair meas- 
ure be carried under her own flag ; that New York is 
fast becoming a financial centre powerful enough to be 
able to disregard the dictation — and promising ere long 
to be a rival — of London ; that during the last decade, 
America has been relieving England of vast quantities 
of her bonds and shares, heretofore held in London, 
and that the wealth of her people has increased so 
rapidly that she can find within herself the capital for her 
industries and (except in times like the recent panic) 
need no longer go abroad to beg. It is also true 
that of recent years England has become not a little 
uneasy at the growing volume of American trade, even 
within the borders of the British Isles themselves ; but 
this newly developed uneasiness in British minds, how- 
ever well grounded, can bear no comparison to the feel- 
ing of antagonism towards England — an antagonism 
compounded of mingled respect and resentment — which 
Americans of the older generation have had borne in 
upon them from youth up. To Englishmen, the grow- 
ing commercial power of the United States is a new 
phenomenon, not yet altogether recognised and only 
half-understood ; for they have been for so long accus- 
tomed to consider themselves the rulers of the sea-borne 
trade of the world that it is with difficulty that they com- 
prehend that their supremacy can be seriously threat- 
ened. To the American, on the other hand, British 
commercial supremacy has, at least since 1862, been 
an incontrovertible and disheartening fact. The huge 
bulk of British commerce and British wealth has loomed 



54 The Twentieth Century American 

so large as to shut out his view of all the world ; it has 
hemmed him in on all sides, obstructed him, towered 
over him. And all the while, as he grew richer, he has 
seen that Great Britain only profited the more, by inter- 
est on his bonds, by her freight charges, by her profit on 
exchange. How is it possible that under such condi- 
tions the American can think about or feel towards 
England as the Englishman has thought about and 
felt towards him? 

Yet even now not one half has been told. We have 
seen that the geographical proximity of Great Britain 
and the overshadowing bulk of British commerce could 
not fail — neither separately could fail — to create in 
American minds an attitude towards England different 
from the natural attitude of Englishmen towards the 
United States; but both these influences together, 
powerful though each may be, are almost unimportant 
compared to the factor which most of all colours, and 
must colour, the American's view of Great Britain, — 
and that is the influence of the history of his own 
country. 

The history of the United States as an independent 
nation goes back no more than one hundred and thirty 
years, a space to be spanned by two human lives ; so 
that events of even her very earliest years are still recent 
history and the sentiments evoked by those events have 
not yet had time to die. In the days of the childhood 
of fathers of men still living (the thing is possible, so 
recent is it) the nation was born out of the throes of 
a desperate struggle with Great Britain — a struggle 
which left the name " British " a word of loathing and 
contempt to American ears. American history proper 
begins with hatred of England ; nor has there been 



The Difference in Point of View 55 

anything in the course of that history, until the present 
decade, calculated to tend to modify that hatred in any 
material degree. 

During the nineteenth century, the United States, 
except for the war with Spain at its close, had little 
contact with foreign Powers. She lived isolated, con- 
centrating all her energies on the developing of her 
own resources and the work of civilising a continent. 
Foreign complications scarcely came within the range 
of her vision. The Mexican War was hardly a foreign 
war. The only war with another nation in the whole 
course of the century was that with Great Britain in 
1812. Reference has already been made to the Eng- 
lish ignorance of the War of 1812 ; but to the American 
it was the chief event in the foreign politics of his 
country during the first century and a quarter of its 
existence, and the Englishman's ignorance thereof 
moves him either to irritation or to amusement accord- 
ing to his temperament. In the American Civil War, 
British sympathy with the South was unhappily exag- 
gerated in American eyes by the Alabama incident. 
The North speedily forgave the South ; but it has not 
yet entirely forgiven Great Britain. 

The other chief events of American history have 
nearly all, directly or indirectly, tended to keep Great 
Britain before the minds of the people as the one 
foreign Power with whom armed conflict was an ever- 
present possibility. The cession of her North American 
territory on the part of France only served to accentu- 
ate England's position as the sole rival of the United 
States upon the continent. Alaska was purchased 
from Russia ; but Russia has long ago been almost 
forgotten in the transaction while it was with Great 



56 The Twentieth Century American 

Britain that the troublesome question of the Alaskan 
boundary arose. And through all the years there have 
been recurring at intervals, not too far apart, various 
minor causes of friction between the two peoples, — in 
the Newfoundland fisheries question on the east and the 
seal fisheries on the west, with innumerable difficulties 
arisinsr out of the common frontier line on the north or 
out of British relations (as in the case of Venezuela) 
with South American peoples. 

If an Englishman were asked what had been the 
chief events in the external affairs of England during 
the nineteenth century he would say : the Napoleonic 
wars, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the China, 
Ashanti, Afghan, Zulu, Soudan, Burmese, and Boer 
wars, the occupation of Egypt, the general expansion 
of the Empire in Africa — and what not else besides. 
He would not mention the United States. To the 
American the history of his country has chiefly to do 
with Great Britain. 

Just as geographically British territory surrounds 
and abuts on the United States on almost every side ; 
just as commercially Great Britain has always hemmed 
in, dominated, and overshadowed the United States, 
so, historically, Great Britain has been the one and 
constant enemy, actual or potential, and her power a 
continual menace. How is it possible that the Ameri- 
can should think of England as the Englishman thinks 
of the United States ? 

There have, moreover, been constantly at work in 
America forces the chief object of which has been to 
keep alive hostility to Great Britain. Of native 
Americans who trace their family back to colonial 
days, there are still some among the older generation in 



The Difference in Point of View 57 

whom the old hatred of the Revolutionary War yet 
burns so strongly that they would not, when at work 
on the old family farm in, let us say, Vermont, be 
very seriously surprised on some fine morning to see 
a party of red-coated Hessians come round the angle of 
the hill. There are those living whose chief pastime 
as boys was to fight imaginary battles with the loathed 
British in and out among the old farm-buildings — 
buildings which yet bear upon them, perhaps, the 
marks of real British bullets fired in the real war.' 
And those boys, moving West as they came to man- 
hood, carried the same spirit, the same inherited dislike 
of the name "British," into the cities of the Mississippi 
Valley, across the prairies and over the mountains to 
the Pacific slope. But it is not the real American — 
except one here and there on the old New England 
homestead — who talks much of his anti-British feeling. 
It is the imported American who has refused to allow 
the old hostility to die but has kept pouring contumely 
on the British name and insisted on the incorporation 
of an " anti-British " plank in his party platform to 
catch the votes of the citizens of his own nationality at 
each succeeding election. 

Englishmen are generally aware of the importance in 
American politics of the Irish vote. It is probable, in- 
deed, that, particularly as far as the conditions of the 
last few years are concerned, the importance of that 
vote has been magnified to the English mind. In 

1 1 had written this before reading Senator Hoar's Reminis- 
cences in which, in speaking of his own youth, he tells how 
" Every boy imagined himself a soldier and his highest concep- 
tion of glory was to ' lick the British ' " (An Autobiography 
of Seventy Years). 



58 The Twentieth Century American 

certain localities, and more particularly in a few of the 
larger cities, it is still, of course, an important factor 
by its mere numbers ; but even in the cities in which 
the Irish vote is still most in evidence at elections, 
the influx during the past decade from all parts of 
Europe of immigrants who in the course of the five- 
years term become voters has, of necessity, lessened 
its relative importance. 

In New York City, for instance, through which pass 
annually some nineteen twentieths of all the immi- 
grants coming into the country, the foreign elements 
other than Irish — German, Italian (mainly from the less 
educated portions of the Peninsula), Hungarian, Polish, 
Russian, Hebrew, Roumanian, etc., — now far outnumber 
the Irish. In New York, indeed, the Germans are 
alone more numerous ; but the Irish have always 
shown a larger interest in, and a greater capacity for, 
political action, so that they still retain an influence 
out of all proportion to their voting number. On the 
other hand the Irish, or their leaders, have maintained 
so corrupt a standard of political action (so that a large 
proportion of the evils from which the affairs of certain 
of the larger American cities suffer to-day may be 
justly charged to their methods and influence) that it 
is uncertain whether their abuse of Great Britain does 
not, in the minds of certain, and those not the worst, 
classes of the people react rather to create good- will 
towards England than to increase hostility. 

The power of the Irish vote as an anti-British force, 
then, is undoubtedly overrated in England ; but it 
must be borne in mind that some of the other foreign 
elements in the population which on many questions 
may act as a counterpoise to the Irish are not them- 



The Difference in Point of View 59 

selves conspicuously friendly to England. If we hear 
too much of the Irish in America, we hear perhaps too 
little of some of the other peoples. And the point 
which I would impress on the English reader is that he 
cannot expect the American to feel towards England 
as he himself feels towards the United States. The 
American people came in the first instance justly by 
its hatred of the name " British," and there have not 
since been at work any forces sufficiently powerful to 
obliterate that hatred, while there have been some 
operating to keep it alive. 



CHAPTER III 

Two Sides of the American Character 

Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting Power — The 
Americans as Sailors — The Nation's Greatest Asset — Self-re- 
liance of the People — The Making of a Doctor — And of a Sur- 
veyor — Society in the Rough — New York and the Country — 
An Anglo-Saxon Trait — America's Unpreparedness — American 
Consuls and Diplomats — A Homogeneous People — The Value 
of a Common Speech — America more Anglo-Saxon than Britain 
—Mr. Wells and the Future in America. 

One circumstance ought in itself to convince Amer- 
icans that cowardice or fear has no share in the greater 
outspokenness of England's good-will during these 
later years, namely that when Great Britain showed 
her sympathy with the United States at the time of 
the Spanish War, Englishmen largely believed that 
they were giving that sympathy to the weaker Power, 1 

> As a statement of this nature is always liable to be challenged 
let me say that it is based on the opinions expressed in conver- 
sation by the correspondents of English papers who came to 
America at that time in an endeavour to reach Cuba. They 
certainly did not anticipate that the American fleet would be 
able to stand against the Spanish. And, lest American readers 
should be in danger of taking offence at this, let it be remem- 
bered with how much apprehension the arrival of Admiral 
Cervera's ships was awaited along the eastern coast and how 
cheaply excellent seaside houses were to be acquired that year. 
Events have moved so rapidly since then (above all has the po- 
sition of the United States in the world changed so much) that 

60 



Two Sides of American Character 61 

— weaker, that is as far as organised fighting strength, 
immediately available, was concerned. It is a century 
or two since Englishmen did Spain the compliment of 
being afraid of her. How then, in 1895, could they 
have had any fear of the United States ? 

Few Europeans, indeed, have any conception of the 
fighting power of the United States, for it is not large 
on paper. Nor is an Englishman likely to make special 
allowance for the fighting efficiency of either the ships 
or the men, for the reason that, in spite of experiences 
which might have bred misgivings (English memory 
for such matters is short), it remains to him unthinkable 
that, in the last resort, any men or still less any ships 
will prove — man for man and gun for gun — better than 
his own. He might be glad to concede that 25,000 
American troops are the equivalent of 50,000 Germans 
or 100,000 Cossacks, or that two American men of war 
should be counted as the equivalent of three Italian. 
He makes no such concession when it comes to a com- 
parison with British troops or British ships. What 
then can there be in the fighting strength of the United 
States, for all the figures that she has to show, to breed 
in him a suggestion of fear ? 

This is a statement which will irritate many a patriotic 
American, who will say that it is the same old British 
superciliousness. But it should not irritate ; and if 
the American understood the Englishman better and 
the spirit which inspires him, he would like it. The 

it is not easy now to conjure up the circumstances and senti- 
ments of those days. If Americans generally erred as widely 
as they did in their estimate of the Spanish sea-power as com- 
pared with their own, it is not surprising that Englishmen erred 
perhaps a little more. 



62 The Twentieth Century American 

Englishman prefers not to regard the American troops 
or ships as potentially hostile, and Great Britain has 
sufficient to do in measuring the strength of her possi- 
ble enemies. As for the people of the United States, he 
opines that they know their own business. They are 
best able to j udge how many ships and how many men 
under arms will serve their purpose. England would, 
indeed, be glad to see the United States with a few more 
ships than she has, but — it is none of England's busi- 
ness. Englishmen can only wish her luck and hope 
that she is making no mistake in her calculations and 
go on about their own affairs, which are pressing enough. 
At the same time if the United States should prove to 
have miscalculated and should ever need . . . — well, 
England has a ship or two herself. 

It would be a gain for the world if Americans would 
only understand! 

The Englishman of the present generation knows 
practically nothing of the Americans as a maritime 
nation ; and again let me say that this arises not from 
superciliousness or any intentional neglect, but merely 
from the fact that the matter is one beyond his horizon. 
He is so familiar with the fact that Britain rules the 
waves that he has no notion that whenever opportunity 
of comparison has offered the Americans have generally 
shown themselves (if there has been anything to choose) 
the better sailors of the two. Every English reader 
will probably read that sentence again to see if he has 
not misunderstood it. The truth is that Englishmen 
have forgotten the incidents of the Revolutionary War 
almost as completely as they have forgotten those of the 
War of 1812 ; Paul Jones is as meaningless a name to 



Two Sides of American Character 63 

them as Andrew Jackson. While it is true that 
American historians have given the American people, 
up to the present generation, an unfortunately exag- 
gerated idea of the heroism of the patriot forces and 
have held the British troops up to all manner of un- 
merited odium, it is also true that English historians, 
while the less partial of the two, have perhaps been 
over-careful not to err in the same direction. Not until 
the last twenty years — hardly until the last four or five 
— have there been accessible to the public of the two 
countries the materials for forming a just judgment on 
the incidents of the war. It must be confessed that 
there is at least nothing in the evidence to permit 
the Englishman to think that a hundred years ago the 
home-bred Briton could either sail or fight his ships 
better than the Colonial. Nor has the Englishman as 
a rule any idea that in the middle of the nineteenth 
century the American commercial flag was rapidly 
ousting the British flag from the seas. Even with a 
knowledge of the facts, it is still hard for us to-day to 
comprehend. 

So amazing was the growth of the mercantile marine 
of the young republic — such qualities did the Ameri- 
cans show as shipbuilders, as sailors, and as merchants 
— that in 1860, the American mercantile marine was 
greater in tonnage and number of vessels than that of 
all other nations of the world combined, except Great 
Britain, and almost equal to that of Great Britain her- 
self. These were of course the days of glory of the 
American clipper. It appeared then inevitable that in 
a few years the Stars and Stripes — a flag but little 
more than half a century old — would be the first com- 
mercial flag of the world ; and but for the outbreak 



64 The Twentieth Century American 

of the Civil War, it is at least probable that by now 
Englishmen would have grown accustomed to recog- 
nising that not they but another people were the real 
lords of the ocean's commerce. When the Civil War 
broke out, the tonnage of American registered vessels 
was something over five and one-half millions ; and 
when the war closed it was practically non-existent. 
The North was able to draw from its merchant service 
for the purposes of war no fewer than six hundred ves- 
sels of an aggregate tonnage of over a million and car- 
rying seventy thousand men. Those ships and men 
went a long way towards turning the tide of victory to 
the North ; but when peace was made the American 
commercial flag had disappeared from the seas. 

It would be out of place here to go into a statement 
of the causes which co-operated with the substitution of 
iron for wood in shipbuilding to make it hard at first 
for America to regain her lost position, or into a discus- 
sion of the incomprehensible apathy (incomprehensible 
if one did not know the ways of American legislation) 
which successive Congresses have shown in the matter. 

A year or so back, the nation seemed to have made 
up its mind in earnest to take hold of the problem of 
the restoration of its commercial marine ; but the de- 
feat in the early part of 1907 of the Ship Subsidies 
Bill left the situation much where it was when Presi- 
dent Grant, President Harrison, and President McKin- 
ley, in turn, attempted to arouse Congress to the 
necessity of action ; except that with the passage of 
time conditions only become worse and reform neces- 
sarily more difficult. The Ship Subsidies Bill was 
defeated largely by the votes of the representatives of 
the Mississippi Valley and the Middle Western States, 



Two Sides of American Character 65 

and to an outsider the opposition of those regions looked 
very much like a manifestation of selfishness and lack 
of patriotism on the part of the inland population 
jealous of the seaboard States. In the East, various 
reasons were given at the time for the failure of the 
measure. I happened myself to be travelling then 
through the States of the Mississippi Valley, and I 
discussed the situation with people whom I met, and 
particularly with politicians. The explanations which 
I received fell into one of two categories. Some said : 
"It is true that the Mississippi Valley and the West 
have little direct interest in our shipbuilding industry, 
but none the less we should like to see our merchant 
marine encouraged and built up. The trouble is that 
we have from experience acquired a profound distrust 
of a certain ' gang ' in the Senate [and here would often 
follow the names of certain four or five well-known 
Senators, chiefly from the East], and the mere fact 
that these Senators were backing this particular bill 
was enough to convince us Westerners that it 
included a 'steal' " 

Others took this ground : " The Mississippi Valley 
and the West believe in the general principle of 
Protection, but we think that our legislation has car- 
ried this principle far enough. We should now prefer 
to see a little easing off. We do not believe that the 
right way to develop our commercial marine is, first by 
our tariff laws to make it impossible for us to build or 
operate ships in competition with other countries and 
then to be obliged, in order to equalise things, to have 
recourse to bounties. What we want is a modification 
of our law which will help us, in the first instance, to 
build and to run the ships at a reasonable price. When 



66 The Twentieth Century American 

a bill to that effect comes along, the Mississippi Val- 
ley will be found all right." 

Not a few of the voters in the East, also cordially 
interested in any plan that seemed to them promising 
and equitable for building up the American commercial 
marine, took the ground that it was an absurdity to 
build up barriers against foreign trade by enacting a 
tariff bill, such as the Dingley measure, with higher 
duties than the country had ever known, and then to 
attempt to overcome that barrier by means of bounty 
measures, which must themselves constitute a fresh 
form of taxation on the general public. 

The mass of the people, in fact, are in sympathy 
with the movement to encourage American shipping, 
but, for sectional or other reasons, a large proportion 
of them objected to the particular form in which the 
end was sought to be reached in the last Congress. So 
long as the voice and opinion of Mr. Roosevelt have any 
weight, it is not to be expected that the subject is go- 
ing to be allowed to drop ; and with his strength of will 
and determination of character it is at least not improb- 
able that, where successive Presidents before him have 
failed, he will, whether still in the Presidential chair or 
not, ultimately succeed, and that not the smallest of 
the reasons for gratitude to him which future genera- 
tions of Americans will recognise will be that he helped 
to recreate the nation's merchant marine. At present, 
less than nine per cent, of the American foreign com- 
merce is carried in American bottoms, a situation which 
is not only sufficiently humiliating to a people who 
but a short while ago hoped to dominate the carrying 
trade of all countries but also, what perhaps hurts the 
Americans almost as much as the injury to their pride, 



Two Sides of American Character 67 

absurdly wasteful and unbusinesslike. English ship- 
ping circles may take the prospect of efforts being 
made by the United States to recover some measure of 
its lost prestige seriously or not : but it would be inad- 
visable to admit as a factor in their calculations any 
theory as to the inability of the Americans either to 
build ships or sail them as well as the best. With the 
growth of an American merchant marine — if a growth 
comes — will come also the obvious need of a larger 
navy ; and other nations might do well to remember 
that Americans have never yet shown any inability to 
fight their ships, any more than they have to build or 
sail them. 

In basing any estimate of the fighting strength of the 
United States on the figures of her army or navy as 
they look on paper, the people of other nations — Eng- 
lishmen no less than any — leave out of sight, because 
they have no standard for measuring, that remarkable 
attribute of the American character, which is the great- 
est of the national assets, the combination of self-reli- 
ance and resourceful ingenuity which seems to make 
the individual American equal to almost any fortune. 
It is remarkable, but not beyond explanation. It is 
an essentially Anglo-Saxon trait. The British have 
always possessed it in a degree, if inferior to the present 
day American, at least in excess of other peoples. The 
history of the Empire bears witness to it on every 
page and it is in truth one of the most fundamentally 
English things in the American character. But the con- 
ditions of their life have developed it in Americans 
beyond any need which the Englishman has felt. The 
latter, living at home amid the established institutions of 
a society which moves on its way evenly and without 



68 The Twentieth Century American 

friction regardless of any effort or action on his part, 
has had no occasion for those qualities on which the 
American's success, his life, have commonly depended 
from day to day amid the changing emergencies of a 
frontier life. The American of any generation previous 
to that which is now growing up has seldom known 
what it meant to choose a profession or a vocation in 
life ; but must needs do the work that came to him, 
and, without apprenticeship or training, turn to what- 
ever craft has offered. 

The notion that every American is, without any special 
training, by mere gift of birthright, competent to any 
task that may be set him, is commonly said to have 
come in with Andrew Jackson ; and President Eliot, 
of Harvard, has dubbed it a " vulgar conceit." ' It is 
undoubtedly a dangerous doctrine to become estab- 
lished as a tenet of national belief and least of all men 
can the head of a great institution for the training of 
the nation's youth afford to encourage it. None the 
less, when the American character is compared with 
that of any European people, it has, if not justification, 
at least considerable excuse. 

Once into a new mining camp in the West there 
drove in the same " stage-coach" two young men who 
became friends on the journey. Each was out to seek 
his fortune and each hoped to find it in the new com- 
munity. Each had his belongings in a " valise " and 
in each " valise " among those belongings was a " shin- 
gle," or name-plate, bearing each the name of its re- 
spective owner followed by the words " Attorney at 

1 History of the United States, by James Ford Rhodes, 
vol. vi. 



Two Sides of American Character 69 

Law." The young men compared their shingles and 
considered. The small camp would not need two law- 
yers, even if it would provide a living for one. So 
they " matched " coins (the American equivalent of 
tossing up) to see which of the two should erase " At- 
torney at Law " from his sign and substitute " Doc- 
tor of Medicine." Which is history ; as also is the 
following : 

In another mining camp, some twenty-three years 
ago, there was at first no surveyor. Men paced off the 
boundaries of their claims and went to work as fancy 
inclined them, and in the town which began to grow up 
houses were built at random regardless of any street- 
line and with no finnicking considerations of a build- 
ing frontage. So a young fellow whose claim was 
unpromising sent out to civilisation for a set of instru- 
ments (he had never seen a transit or a level before) and 
began business as a surveyor. He used to come to me 
secretly that I might figure out for him the cubic con- 
tents of a ditch or the superficial area of a wall. He 
could barely write and knew no arithmetic at all ; but 
he worked most of the night as well as all the day, and 
when the town took to itself a form of organised govern- 
ment he was appointed official surveyor and within a 
few weeks thereafter was made surveyor to the county. 

I doubt not that G T is rich and prosperous 

to-day. 

On a certain wharf, no matter where, lounged half a 
dozen seamen when to them came the owner of a vessel. 
It was in the days of '49 when anything that could be 
made to float was being put into commission in the 
California trade, and men who could navigate were 
scarce. 



jo The Twentieth Century American 

" Can any of you men " said the newcomer " take a 
boat out for me to San Francisco ? " 

"I '11 do it, sir" said one stepping forward. 

"Thunder, Bill! " exclaimed a comrade in an under- 
tone, " you don't know nothing about navigating." 

" Shut your mouth," said Bill. " Maybe I don't 
know nothing now, but you bet I will by the time I 
get to 'Frisco." 

The same spirit guides almost every young Ameri- 
can who drifts West to tackle hopefully whatever job 
the gods may send. The cases wherein he has any 
destiny marked out for him or any especial preference 
as to the lines on which his future career shall run (ex- 
cept that he may hope ultimately to be President of 
the United States) are comparatively few. In ten years, 
he may be a grocer or a banker or a dry-goods mer- 
chant or a real-estate man or a lawyer. Whatever 
he is, more likely than not ten years later he will be 
something else. 

"What is your trade?" is the first question which 
an Englishman asks of an applicant for employment ; 
and the answer will probably be truthful and certainly 
unimaginative. 

" What can you do ? " the American enquires under 
the same circumstances. " ' Most anything. What 
have you got to do ? " is commonly the reply. 

It is an extraordinarily impressive experience for an 
Englishman to go out from the old-established well- 
formulated ways of the club-life and street-life of Lon- 
don, to assist in — not merely to watch but to co-operate 
in — the organisation of society in the wilderness: to 
see a town grow up — indeed, so far as his clumsy abil- 
ity in the handling of an ax will permit, to help to 



Two Sides of American Character 71 

build it ; to join the handful of men, bearded, roughly 
clad, and unlettered most of them, proceeding deliber- 
ately to the fashioning of the framework of govern- 
ment, the election of town officers, the appointment 
of a sheriff, and the necessary provisions, rough but not 
inadequate, for dealing with the grosser forms of crime. 
Quickly thereafter, in the case which I have especially 
in mind, came the formation of the county govern- 
ment and, simultaneously therewith, the opportunity 
(automatically and by mere right of the number of the 
population) to elect a representative to the Territorial 
Legislature. In the first year, however, this last privi- 
lege had to be pretermitted. The Territorial laws re- 
quired that any member must have been resident in 
the district from which he came for not less than six 
months prior to his election and must be able to read 
and write ; and, as cruel chance would have it, among 
the first prospectors to find their way into the new 
diggings in the preceding winter, who alone could 
comply with the required term of residence, not one 
could write his name. Had but one been able to do it 
ever so crudely — could one but have made a reason- 
able pretence of an ability to stumble through the 
opening paragraphs of the Constitution of the United 
States, — that man would inevitably and unanimously 
have been elected a full-blown Legislator. As it was, 
the new district was perforce compelled to go without 
representation in the Territorial Capital. 

"But," it will be objected, and by no one more 
quickly than by the American of the Eastern States, 
" All Americans do not go through these experiences. 
How many New Yorkers have helped to organise a 
new mining town?" Not many, certainly; and that 



72 The Twentieth Century American 

is one of the reasons why New York is, perhaps, the 
least representative section of all the United States. But 
though the American of to-day may not have had to do 
these things, his father and his grandfather had to. 
The necessity has long ago left New York, but Illinois 
was not far removed from the circumstances of frontier 
life when Abraham Lincoln was a youth; and the men 
who laid the foundations of Minneapolis, and Kansas 
City, and Omaha, and Duluth, are still alive. The 
frontiersman is latent in every American. 

For the benefit of many Englishmen who think that 
they have been to the United States, when as a matter 
of fact they have only been to New York, it may be as 
well to explain why New York City is the least typi- 
cally American of all parts of the country. There are 
some who go back as far as Eevolutionary days for the 
explanation, and point out that even then New York 
was more loyalist than patriot; one might go even 
farther back and show that New York always had a 
conspicuously large non -Anglo-Saxon element. But 
there is no need to go back even to the Revolution. 
In the century that has passed since then, the essential 
characteristics of the American character have been 
the products of the work which the people had to do 
in the subduing of the wilderness and of the isolation 
of the country — of its segregation from contact with 
the outside world. New York has been the one point 
in America farthest removed from the wilderness and 
most in touch with Europe, and it has been there that 
the chief forces which have moulded the American 
character have been least operative. The things in a 
New Yorker which are most characteristic of his New- 
Yorkship are least characteristically American, and 



Two Sides of American Character 73 

among these is a much greater friendliness towards 
Great Britain than is to be found elsewhere except in 
one or two towns of specialised traits. This is not 
in any way to depreciate the position of New York as 
the greatest and most influential city in the United 
States, as well as (whatever may have been the relative 
standing of it and Boston up to twenty years ago) the 
literary and artistic centre of the country ; and I do not 
know that any city of the world has a sight more 
impressive in its way than upper-middle New York — 
that is to say, than Fifth Avenue from Madison Square 
to the Park. But the English visitor who acquires his 
ideas of American sentiments from what he hears in 
New York dining-rooms or in Wall Street offices, is 
likely to go far astray. There is an instructive, if 
hackneyed, story of the little girl whose father boasted 
that she had travelled all over the United States. 
" Dear me ! " said the recipient of the information, 
"she has travelled a great deal for one of her age!" 
" Yes, sir ! all over the United States — all, except 
east of Chicago." 

In the course of a long term of residence in the 
United States, this adaptability, this readiness to turn 
to whatever seems at the time to offer the best " open- 
ing " (which is so conspicuously a national trait 
but is not especially noticeable in the typical New 
Yorker) becomes so familiar that it ceases to be worth 
comment. I have seen among my own friends journal- 
ists become hotel managers, advertising solicitors turn 
to "real estate agents," merchants translated straight 
into responsible positions in the executive departments 
of railway companies, and railway men become mer. 



74 The Twentieth Century American 

chants and bankers, editors change into engineers and 
engineers into editors, and lawyers into anything from 
ambassadors to hotel clerks. I am not now speaking 
in praise of these conditions or of the results in in- 
dividual cases. The point to be noticed is that the 
people among whom these conditions prevail must in 
the long run develop into a people of extraordinary 
resourcefulness and versatility. And in the individual 
cases, the results are not nearly as deplorable as an 
Englishman might suppose or as they would be if the 
raw material consisted of home-staying Englishmen. 

The trait however is, as has been said, essentially an 
Anglo-Saxon trait — an English trait — and the colonial 
Englishman develops the same qualities in a not in- 
comparable degree. The Canadian and the New Zea- 
lander acquire a like unconquerable soul, but the 
Englishman at home is not much impressed thereby, 
chiefly for the reason that he is almost as ignorant of 
the Canadian and the New Zealander as he is of the 
American, and with the same benevolent ignorance. 

In the individual citizen of the United States, he 
recognises the quality in a vague way. " Yankee in- 
genuity " is familiar to him and he is interested in, and 
amused at, the imperturbability with which the individ- 
ual American — and especially the individual American 
woman — confronts and rises at least equal to whatever 
new and unheard of conditions he (or she) may find 
himself (or herself) placed among in England. But 
just as the American will not from the likability and 
kindliness of individual Englishmen draw any gen- 
eral inference as to the likability and kindliness of the 
nation, so the Englishman or other European rarely 
gives to these occasional attributes, which he sees re- 



Two Sides of American Character 75 

produced again and again in particular Americans, 
their proper value as the manifestations of a national 
trait of the first importance, a trait which makes the 
people unquestionably formidable as competitors in 
peace and would make them correspondingly formid- 
able as antagonists in war. The trait is, as I have said, 
perhaps the most precious of all the American national 
assets. 

Great Britain has recently had abundant evidence 
of the difficulty of turning out all the paraphernalia of 
victory ready made and is now making earnest effort to 
guard against the necessity of attempting it again. But 
the rules which apply to European peoples do not apply, 
with anything like equal force, to America. England 
in the South African war found by no means despicable 
righting material almost ready made in her colonial 
troops ; and that same material, certainly not inferior, 
America can supply in almost unlimited quantities. 
From the West and portions of the South, the United 
States can at any time draw immense numbers of men 
who, in the training of their frontier life, their ability 
to ride and shoot, their habituation to privations of 
every kind, possess all those qualities which made the 
Boers formidable, with the better moral fibre of the 
Anglo-Saxon to back them. 

But this quality of resourcefulness and self-reliance 
is not a mere matter of the moral or physical qualities 
of the individual. Its spirit permeates the nation as a 
unit The machinery of the government will always 
move in emergencies more quickly than that of any 
European country ; and unpreparedness becomes a 
vastly less serious matter. The standing army of the 
United States, in spite of the events of the last few 



76 The Twentieth Century American 

years, remains little more than a Federal police force ; 
and with no mercantile marine to protect and no colonies, 
there has been till lately no need of an American navy. 
But the European who measures the unpreparedness 
of the nation in the terms of the unpreparedness 
of his own, or any other European, country, not taking 
into account the colonial character of the population, 
the alertness and audacity of the national mind, the 
resourcefulness and confident self-reliance of the 
people, is likely to fall into error. 

The reverse of the medal is, perhaps, more familiar 
to Europeans, under the form of what has generally 
been called the characteristic American lack of the 
sentiment of reverence. The lack is indubitably there — 
is necessarily there; for what the Englishman does not 
commonly understand is that that lack is not a positive 
quality in itself. It is but the reflection, as it were, or 
complement, of the national self-reliance. How should 
the American in his new country, with his " Particu- 
larist " spirit, his insistence on the independence and 
sovereignty of the individual, seem to Europeans other 
than lacking in reverence? 

It is true that now, by mere passage of years, there 
are monuments in the United States which are begin- 
ning to gather the dignity and respect which naturally 
attach to age. The American of the present day has 
great veneration for the wisdom of the Fathers of the 
Republic, much love for the old buildings which are as- 
sociated with the birth of the nation. Even the events 
of the Civil War are beginning to put on something 
of the majesty of antiquity, but there are still alive too 
many of the combatants in tbat war — who are obviously 
but commonplace men — for the figures of any but 



Two Sides of American Character 77 

some three or four of the greatest of the actors to have 
yet assumed anything like heroic proportions. For 
the rest, what is there in the country which the living 
American has not made himself, or which his fathers 
did not make ? The fabric of society is of too new a 
weaving, he knows too well the trick of it, for it to be 
wonderful in his eyes. 

Lack of reverence is only a symptom of the Ameri- 
can's strength — not admirable in itself, yet, as the index 
to something admirable, not, perhaps, altogether to be 
scorned. Nor must it be supposed that the lack of 
reverence implies any want of idealism, or any poverty 
of imagination, any absence of love or desire of the 
good and beautiful. The American is idealist and 
imaginative beyond the Englishman. 

The American national character is, indeed, a finer 
thing than the European generally supposes. The lat- 
ter sees only occasional facets and angles, offshoots 
and outgrowths, some of them not desirable but even 
grotesque in themselves, while those elements which 
unify and harmonise the whole are likely to escape him. 
The blunders of American diplomats — the gaucheries 
and ignorances of American consular representatives — 
these are familiar subjects to Europeans ; on them many 
a travelling Englishman has based his rather contemptu- 
ous opinion of the culture of the American people as a 
whole. But it is unsafe to argue from the inferiority 
of the representative to the inferiority of the thing 
represented. 

If two fruit-growers have adjoining orchards and, for 
the purpose of making a display at an agricultural show, 
one spends months of careful nourishing, training, and 
pruning of certain trees wherefrom he selects with care 



78 The Twentieth Century American 

the finest of his fruit, while the other without prepara- 
tion goes out haphazard to his orchard and reaches for 
the first fruit that he sees, it is probable that, judging 
by their exhibits, the public will get an erroneous idea 
of the characters of the orchards as a whole. And this 
is precisely the difference between the representatives 
whom the United States sends abroad and those sent 
to be displayed beside them by other nations. 

There is no recognised diplomatic service in the 
United States, no school for the training of consular 
representatives, no training or nurturing or pruning of 
any sort. The fundamental objection of the American 
people to the creation of any permanent privileged 
class, has made the thing impossible in the past, while, 
under the system of party patronage, practically the 
entire representation of the country abroad — commer- 
cial as well as diplomatic — is changed with each 
change of government. The American cannot count 
on holding an appointment abroad for more than four 
years ; and while four years is altogether too short a 
term to be considered a career, it is over-long for a holi- 
day. So in addition to the lack of any trained class 
from which to draw, even among the untrained the 
choice is much restricted by the undesirability of the 
conditions of the service itself. 

Though the conditions have improved immensely of 
late years, the fact remains that the consular service as 
a whole is not fairly to be compared on equal terms 
with that of other countries ; and the majority of ap- 
pointments are still made as the reward for minor ser- 
vices to the party in power. Nor are the conditions 
which govern the appointments to the less important 
diplomatic posts much different; but Great Britain has 



Two Sides of American Character 79 

abundant cause to be aware that when the place is one 
which appeals to the ambition of first-class men, first- 
class men enough are forthcoming ; though even Am- 
bassadors to London are generally lacking in any 
special training or experience up to the time of their 
appointment. 

Sydney Smith's phrase has been often enough 
quoted — that when a woman makes a public speech, 
we admire her as we admire a dog that stands upon its 
hind legs, not because she does it well, but because 
she does it at all. Congress includes among its mem- 
bers many curious individuals and, as a unit, it does 
queer things at times. State legislatures are sometimes 
strange looking bodies of men and on occasions they 
achieve legislation which moves the country to mirth. 
The representatives of the nation abroad make blun- 
ders which contribute not a little to the gaiety of the 
world. But the thing to admire is that they do these 
things at all — that the legislators, whether Federal or 
State, and the members of the consular service, ap- 
pointed or elected as they are, and from the classes 
which they represent, do somehow manage to form 
legislative bodies which, year in and year out, will 
bear comparison well enough with other Parliaments, 
and do in one way and another succeed in giving their 
country a service abroad which is far from despicable 
as compared with that of other peoples, nor all devoid 
of dignity. The fact that results are not immeasurably 
worse than they are is no small tribute to the adapta- 
bility of the American character. There is no other 
national character which could stand the same test. 

In the absence of any especially trained or officially 
dedicated class, the American people in the mass 



80 The Twentieth Century American 

provides an amazing quantity of not impossible material 
out of which legislators and consuls may be made — 
just as it might equally well be made into whatever 
should happen to be required. 

And this fact strikes at the root of a common misap- 
prehension in the minds of foreigners as to the con- 
stitution of the American people, a misapprehension 
which is fostered by what is written by other foreigners 
after inadequate observation. 

Much is thus written of the so-called heterogeneous- 
ness of the people of America. The Englishman who 
visits the United States for a few weeks only, com- 
monly comes away with an idea that the New Yorker 
is the American people ; whereas we have seen why it 
is that good American authorities maintain that in all 
the width and depth of the continent there is no ag- 
gregation of persons so little representative of the 
American people as a whole as the inhabitants of New 
York. After the Englishman has been in the United 
States for some months or a year or two, he grows be- 
wildered and reaches the conclusion that there is no 
common American type — nothing but a patchwork of 
unassimilated units. In which conclusion he is just as 
mistaken as he was at first. There does exist a clearly 
defined and homogeneous American type. 

Let us suppose that all the negroes had been swept 
as with some vast net down and away into the Gulf of 
Mexico; that the Irishmen had been gathered out of the 
cities and deposited back into the Atlantic ; that the Ger- 
mans had been rounded up towards their fellows in 
Chicago and Milwaukee and then tipped gently into 
Lake Michigan, while the Scandinavians, having been 
assembled in Minnesota, had been edged courteously 



Two Sides of American Character 81 

over the Canadian border; — when all this had been 
done, there would still remain the great American 
People. Of this great People there would remain cer- 
tain local variations — in parts of the South, in New 
England, on the plains — but each clearly recognisable 
as a variety only, differing but superficially and in 
substance possessing well-defined all the generic and 
specific attributes of the race. 

If the entire membership of the Chicago Club were 
to be transferred bodily to the Manhattan Club-house in 
New York, and all the members of the Manhattan were 
simultaneously made to migrate from Fifth Avenue 
to Michigan Avenue, the club servants, beyond miss- 
ing some familiar faces, would not find much differ- 
ence. Could any man, waking from a trance, tell by 
the men surrounding him whether he was in the Du- 
quesne Club at Pittsburgh or the Minnesota Club in 
St. Paul? And, if it be urged that the select club- 
membership represents a small circle of the population 
only, would the disturbance be much greater if the 
entire populations of Erie and Minneapolis and Kansas 
City were to execute a three-cornered " general post " 
or if Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine, swapped 
inhabitants? How long would it take the inhabitants 
of any one town to settle down in their new environ- 
ment and go to work on precisely the same lines as 
their predecessors whom they dislodged ? The novelty 
would, I think, be even less than if Manchester and 
Birmingham were miraculously made to execute a 
similar change in a night. 

I do not underrate the magnitude of the problem 
presented to the people of America by the immense 
volume of immigration from alien races, and chiefly 



82 The Twentieth Century American 

from the most undesirable strata in those races, of the 
last few years. On the other hand, I have no shadow 
of doubt of the ability of the people to cope with the 
problem and to succeed in assimilating to itself all the 
elements in this great influx while itself remaining 
unchanged. 

It seems to me that the American himself constantly 
overestimates the influence on his national character 
of the immigration of the past. To persons living in 
New York, especially if, from philanthropic motives 
or otherwise, they are brought at all into immediate 
contact with the incoming hordes as they arrive, this 
stream of immigration may well be a terrifying thing. 
Those who are in daily touch with it can hardly fail to 
be oppressed by it, till it gets upon their nerves and 
breeds nightmares ; and to such I have more than 
once recommended that they would do well to take 
a holiday of six months; journey through the West, 
and so come to a realisation of the magnitude of 
their country and correct their point of view. With 
every mile that one recedes from Castle Garden, the 
phenomenon grows less appalling: the cloud which 
was dense enough to blacken New York Jiarbour 
makes not a veil to stop one ray of sunlight when 
shredded out over the Mississippi Valley and the 
Western plains. 

A bucket of sewage (or of Eau de Cologne), however 
formidable in itself, makes very little difference when 
tipped into the St. Lawrence Eiver. It is, of course, 
a portentous fact that some twenty millions of foreig- 
ners should have come into the country to settle in 
the course of half a century ; but, after all, the pro- 



Two Sides of American Character 83 

cess of assimilation has been constantly and success- 
fully at work throughout those fifty years, and I 
think the figures will show that in no one year 
(not even in 1906, when the volume of immigration 
was the largest and contained the greatest proportion 
of the distinctly " undesirable " elements), if we set 
against the totals the number of those aliens returning 
to their own countries and deduct those who have 
come from the English-speaking countries, has the in- 
flux amounted to three quarters of one per cent, of the 
entire population of the country. 

So far, the dilution of the original character of the 
people by the injection of the foreign elements has 
been curiously slight, and while recognising that the 
inflow of the last few years has been more serious, 
both in quantity and character, than at any previous 
period, there does not seem to me any reason for ques- 
tioning the ability of the country to absorb and assimi- 
late it without any impairment of the fundamental 
qualities of the people. That at certain points near 
the seaboard, or in places where the newly introduced 
aliens become congested in masses of industrial work- 
ers, they present a local problem of extreme difficulty 
may be granted, but I think that those who are in con- 
tact with these local problems are inclined to exag- 
gerate the general or national danger. The dominating 
American type will persist, as it persists to-day ; the 
people will remain, in all that is essential, an Anglo- 
Saxon and a homogeneous people. 

In one sense — and that the essential one — the Ameri- 
can people is more homogeneous than the English. 
What individuals among them may have been in the 



84 The Twentieth Century American 

last generation does not matter. The point is here : — 
When one speaks of the "average Englishman" (as, 
without regard to grammar, we persist in doing) what 
he really means is the typical representative of a 
comparatively small section of the population, from the 
middle, or upper middle, classes upward. It is the 
same when one speaks of Frenchmen. When he says 
"the average Frenchman dresses," or "thinks," or 
" talks " in such and such a way, he merely means 
that so does the normal specimen of a class including 
only a few hundred thousand men, and those city 
dwellers, dress or think or speak. The figure is ex- 
cusable because (apart from the fact that an "average" 
of the entire population would be quite unfmdable) the 
comparatively small class does indeed guide, rule, and, 
practically, think for, the whole population. So far as 
foreign countries are concerned, they represent the 
policy and mode of thought of the nation. The great 
numerical majority is practically negligible. 

The same is true of the people of the United States, 
but with this difference, that the class represented by 
the " average " — the class of which, when grouped to- 
gether, it is possible to find a reasonably typical repre- 
sentative — includes in the United States a vastly larger 
proportion of the whole people than is the case in other 
countries. It would not be possible to find a common 
mental or moral divisor for the members of Parliament 
in the aggregate, and an equal number of Norfolk fish- 
ermen or Cornish miners. They are not to be stated in 
common terms. But no such incongruity exists between 
the members of Congress, Michigan lumbermen, and 
the men of the Texas plains. 

It may be that within the smaller circle in England, ' 



Two Sides of American Character 85 

the individuals — thanks to the public schools and the 
universities — are more nearly identical and the type 
specimen would more closely represent the whole. But 
as soon as we get outside the circle, much greater di- 
vergences appear. The English are homogeneous over a 
small area : the Americans homoeogeneous over a much 
larger. 

" You may go all over the States," said Eobert Louis 
Stevenson (and Americans will, for love of the man, 
pardon his calling their country " the States ") " and — 
setting aside the actual intrusion and influence of for- 
eigners, negro, French, or Chinese — you shall scarce 
meet with so marked a difference of accent as in forty 
miles between Edinburgh and Glasgow, or of dialect as 
in the hundred miles between Edinburgh and Aber- 
deen." And Stevenson understates the case. There 
are differences of speech in America, but at the most 
they remain so slight that, after all, the resident in one 
section will rather pride himself on his acuteness in 
recognising the intonation of the stranger as being that 
of some other — of the South, it may be, or of New Eng- 
land. An educated Londoner has difficulty in under- 
standing even the London cockney. Suffolk, Cornish, 
or Lancashire — these are almost foreign tongues to him. 
The American of the South has at least no difficulty 
in understanding the New Englander : the New Yorker 
does not have to make the Californian repeat each sen- 
tence that he utters. 

And this similarity of tongue — this universal mutual 
comprehensibility — is a fact of great importance to the 
nation. It must tend to rapidity of communication — 
to greater uniformity of thought — to much greater 
readiness in the people to concentrate as a nation on one 



86 The Twentieth Century American 

idea or one object. How much, does England not 
lose — there is no way of measuring, but the amount 
must be very great — by the fact that communication of 
thought is practically impossible between people who 
are neighbours? How much would it not contribute to 
the national alertness, to national efficiency, if the local 
dialects could be swept away and the peasantry and 
gentry of all England — nay of the British Isles — talk 
together easily in one tongue? It is impossible not to 
believe that this ease in the interchange of ideas must 
in itself contribute greatly to uniformity of thought 
and character in a people. Possessing it, it is not easy 
to see how the American people could have failed to 
become more homogeneous than the English. 

But there is a deeper reason for their homogeneous- 
ness. The American people is not only an English 
people ; it is much more Anglo-Saxon than the English 
themselves. We have already seen how the essential 
quality of both peoples is an Anglo-Saxon quality — 
what has been called (and the phrase will do as well as 
any other) their " Particularist " instinct. The Angles 
and Saxons (with some modification in the former) were 
tribes of individual workers, sprung from the soil, rooted 
in it, accustomed always to rely on individual labour 
and individual impulse rather than on the initiative, 
the protection, or the assistance of the State or the com- 
munity. The constitutional history of England is little 
more than the story of the steps by which the Anglo- 
Saxon, by the strength which this quality gave him, 
came to dominate the other races which invaded or 
settled in Britain and finally worked his way up to and 
through the Norman crust which, as it were, overlay 
the country. 



Two Sides of American Character 87 

In England many institutions are of course Norman. 
An hereditary aristocracy, the laws of primogeniture 
and entail — these are Norman. By the help of them 
the Norman hoped to perpetuate his authority over the 
Saxon herd ; and failed. Magna Charta, Cromwell, 
the Soundheads, the Puritans, the spirit of nonconform- 
ity, most of the limitations of the power of the Throne, 
the industrial and commercial greatness of Britain — 
these things are Anglo-Saxon. The American colonists 
(however many individuals of Norman blood were 
among them) were Anglo-Saxon ; they came from the 
Anglo-Saxon body of the people and carried with them 
the Anglo-Saxon spirit. They did not reproduce in 
their new environment an hereditary aristocracy, a 
law of primogeniture or of entail. It is probable that 
no single English colony to-day, if suddenly cut loose 
from the Empire and left to fashion its form of society 
anew, would reproduce any one of these things. In the 
United States the Anglo-Saxon spiritwentto work with- 
out Norman assistance or (as we choose to view it) 
Norman encumbrances. The Anglo-Saxon spirit is still 
working in England — never perhaps has its operation 
been more powerfully visible than in the trend of 
thought of the last few years. It is working also in 
the United States ; but, because it there works indepen- 
dently of Norman traditions, it works faster. 

In many things — in almost everything, as we shall 
see — the two peoples are progressing along precisely 
the same path, a path other than that which other na- 
tions are treading. In many things — in almost every- 
thing — the United States moves the more rapidly. It 
seems at first a contradiction in terms to say that the 
Americans are an English people and then to show that 



88 The Twentieth Century American 

in many individual matters the English people is ap- 
proximating to American models. It is in truth no 
contradiction ; and the explanation is obvious. Both 
are impelled by the same spirit, the same motives, the 
same ambitions ; but in England that spirit, those mo- 
tives and ambitions work against greater resistance. 

What looks at first like a peculiar departure on the 
part of the American people will again and again, on 
investigation, be found to be only the English spirit 
shooting ahead faster than it can advance in England. 
When, in a particular matter, it appears as if England 
was coming to conform to American precedent, it is, in 
truth only that, having given the impulse to America, 
she herself is following with less speed than the younger 
runner, but with such speed as she can. 

If we bear this fact in mind we shall see how it is il- 
lustrated, borne out, supported by a score of things 
that it falls in our way to notice ; as it is by many 
hundred things that lie outside our present province. 

We shall have occasion to notice hereafter how in 
the past the American disposition to dislike England 
has been fed by the headlong and superficial criticism 
of American affairs by English " literary ' ; visitors ; and 
it is unfortunate that the latest l English visitor to write 
on the United States has hurt American susceptibili- 
ties almost as keenly as any of his predecessors. With 
all its brilliant qualities, few more superficial " studies " 
of American affairs have been given to the world than 
that of Mr. H. G. Wells. 

» Mr. Crosland has written since ; but he has fortunately not 
been taken sufficiently seriously by the American people even 
to cause them annoyance. 



Two Sides of American Character 89 

Mr. Wells, by his own account, went about the 
country confronting all comers with the questions, 
" What are you going to make of your future? "... 
"What is the American Utopia, how much Will is 
there shaping to attain it ? " This, he says, was the 
conundrum to find an answer to which he crossed the 
Atlantic, and he is much depressed because he failed 
in his search. " When one talks to an American of 
his national purpose he seems a little at a loss "; and 
when he comes to sum up his conclusions : " What 
seems to me the most significant and pregnant thing of 
all is . . . best indicated by saying that the typical 
American has no ' sense of the State.' " ' 

Has Mr. Wells ever gone about England asking 
Englishmen the same question : " What are you going 
to make of your future ? " How much less " at a loss " 
does he anticipate that he would find them ? Mr. 
Wells apparently expected to find every American 
with a card in his vest pocket containing a complete 
scheme of an American Utopia. He was disappointed 
because the government at Washington was not invit- 
ing bids for roofing in the country and laying the por- 
tion north of Mason and Dixon's Line with hot-water 
pipes. 

The quality which Mr. Wells — seeing only its indi- 
vidual manifestations, quite baffled and unable to look 
beyond the individuals to any vision of the people as a 
whole (he travelled over a ludicrously small portion of 
the country )-sums up as a " lack of sense of the State " 
is in truth the cardinal quality which has made the 
greatness of the United States — and of England. It is 
precisely because the peoples rely on individual effort 

1 The Future in America, by H. G. Wells, 1906. 



90 The Twentieth Century American 

and not on the State that they have become greater 
than all other peoples. That is their peculiar political 
excellence — that they are not for ever framing schemes 
for a paternal all-embracing State, but are content to 
work each in his own sphere, asserting his own inde- 
pendence and individuality, from the things as they are, 
little by little towards the things as they ought to be. 

If Mr. Wells had prevailed on any typical American 
to sit down and write what, as he understood it, his 
people were working to accomplish, the latter would 
have written something like this : 

" We have got the basis of a form of government 
under which, when perfected, the individual will have 
larger liberty and better opportunity to assert himself 
than he has ever had in any country since organised 
states have existed. We have a people which enjoys 
to-day more of the material comforts of life than any 
other people on earth, and the chief political problem 
with which we are wrestling to-day is to see that that 
enjoyment is confirmed to them in perpetuity — not 
taken from them or hampered or limited by any power 
of an oppressive capitalism. We are spending more 
money, more energy, more earnest thought on the 
study of education as a science or art and on the en- 
dowment of educational establishments than any other 
people ; as a result we hope that the next generation 
of Americans, besides being the most materially blessed, 
will be the most educated and intelligent of peoples. 
We are doing all we can to weed out dishonesty from 
our commercial dealings. In the period of our growth 
there was necessarily some laxity in our business 
ethics, but we are doing the best we know how to 
improve that, and we believe that on the whole our 



Two Sides of American Character 9 1 

methods of doing business are calculated to produce 
more honest men than those in vogue in other countries. 
What we hope to make of our future therefore is to 
produce a nation of individuals freer, better off, and 
more honest than the world has yet seen. When that 
people comes it can manage its own government." 

Not only are these, I fear, larger national aims than 
the average Englishman dares to propose to himself, 
but they are, I venture to say, much more definitely 
formulated in the " typical American's " mind. If Mr. 
Wells desires to find a people which considers it the 
duty of good citizenship to go about to fashion first the 
roofs and walls, rafters, cornices, and chimney-pots of a 
governmental structure, relying on the State afterwards 
to legislate comfort and culture and virtue into the 
people, he visited the wrong quarter of the globe. In 
the Latin races he will find the " sense of the State " 
luxuriantly developed. 

Mr. Wells appears infinitely distressed by his failure 
to find any unified national feeling in the American 
people — by " the chaotic condition of the American 
Will " — by " the dispersal of power " — by the fact that 
" Americans knew of America mainly as the Flag." 
Which is a most curiously complete demonstration of 
the inadequacy of his judgment 

If Mr. Wells had seen the United States twenty-five 
years ago, ten years ago, and five years ago, before his 
present visit, the one thing that would have most im- 
pressed him would have been the amazing growth of 
the sense of national unity. Mr. Wells looks superfi- 
cially upon the country as it is to-day and finds society 
more chaotic, distances larger, sentiment less crystallised 
than — mirabile ! — in the older countries of Europe, and 



92 The Twentieth Century American 

is plunged in despair. Had he had any knowledge of 
America's past conditions by which to measure the 
momentary phase in which he found the people, he 
would have known that exactly that thing of which 
he most deplores the absence is the thing which, in 
the last thirty years, has grown with more wonderful 
rapidity than anything else in all this country of wonder- 
ful growths. 

The mere fact of this development of national feeling 
is a thing which will necessarily call for attention as 
we go on ; for the present it is enough to say that Mr. 
Wells could hardly have exposed more calamitously 
the superficial and cursory quality of his "study" of 
the country. ' 

As a man may not be able to see the forest because 
of the trees, so Mr. Wells is as one who has stood by a 

i The futility of this kind of impressionist criticism is well 
illustrated by the fact that almost simultaneously with the ap- 
pearance of Mr. Wells' book, a distinguished Canadian (Mr. 
Wilfred Campbell) was recording his impressions of a visit to 
England and said : " The people of Britain leave national and 
social affairs too much in the hands of such men [professional 
politicians]. There is a sad lack of the education of the people 
in the direction of a common patriotism. . . . She must get 
back to the sane idea that it is only as a nation and through the 
national ideal that she can help humanity. . . . She has great 
men in all walks of life ; she has still the highest-toned Press in the 
world ; she has . . . the most ideal legislature, she has great 
universities and churches with the finest and greatest Christian 
ideals. But none of these influences are used, as they should be, 
for the general national good. They work separately, or too 
much as individuals. It is only the leavening of these institu- 
tions with a large spirit of the national destiny that will lift 
Britain . . . out of its present material slough." {The Outlook, 
November 17, 1906.) These words are almost a paraphrase of 
Mr. Wells' indictment of the United States. 



Two Sides of American Character 93 

great river's bank for a few minutes and has not seen 
the river for the flash of the ripples in the sun, the swirl 
of an eddy here and there, the flotsam swinging by on 
the current ; and he has gone away and prattled of the 
ripples and the eddy and the floating branch. The 
great flow of the river down below does not expose 
itself to the vision of three minutes. He only comes to 
understand it who lives by the river for awhile, sits 
down by it and studies it — sees it in flood and drought 
— swims in it, bathes in it Then he will forget the 
ripples and the branches and will come to know some- 
thing of the steadiness of purpose, the depth and strength 
of it, its unity and its power. Nothing but a little more 
experience would enable Mr. Wells to see the national 
feeling of the American people. 

Literature contains few pictures more delightful than 
that of Mr. Wells, drawn by himself, standing with Mr. 
Putnam — Herbert Putnam of all people ! — in the Con- 
gressional Library at Washington and saying (let me 
quote): "'With all this,' I asked him 'why doesn't 
the place think? 1 He seemed, discreetly, to consider 
it did." 

Mr. Putnam is fortunately always discreet. Other- 
wise it would be pleasant to know what he thought — of 
his questioner. 



Note. — On the subject of the homogeneousness of the 
American people, see Appendix A. 



CHAPTER IV 

Mutual Misunderstandings 

America's Bigness — A New Atlantis — The Effect of Expansion 
on a People — A Family Estranged— Parsnips — An American 
Woman in England — An Englishman in America — Inter- 
national Caricatures— Shibboleths : dropped H's and a " twang " 
— Matthew Arnold's Clothes — The Honourable S B . 

" John Bull with plenty of elbow-room" was the 
phrase. It does not necessarily follow that the widest 
lands breed the finest people; and there is worthless 
territory enough in the United States to cut up into 
two or three Englands. Yet no patriotic American 
would wish one rod, pole, or perch of it away, whether 
of the Bad Lands, the Florida Swamps, the Alkali 
Plains of the Southwest, or the most sterile and inac- 
cessible regions of the Rockies. If of no other use, 
each, merely as an instrument of discipline, has contri- 
buted something to the hardening of the fibre of the 
people ; and good and bad together the domain of the 
United States is very large. Englishmen are aware of 
the fact, merely as a fact ; but they seldom seem to 
appreciate its full significance. 

Let us consider for a minute what would be the 
effect on the British people if it suddenly came into 
possession of such an estate. We are not talking now 
of distant colonies : Australia, Canada, New Zealand, 
South Africa — these may be equal together to more 

94 



Mutual Misunderstandings 95 

than another United States, and they are working out 
their own destiny. The inhabitants of each are a band 
of British men and women just as were the early in- 
habitants of the United States and as, essentially, the 
people of the United States still remain to-day. Each 
of those bands will follow its own path and work its own 
miracles — whether greater than that which the people 
of the United States has wrought or not, only later 
generations will know. Each of these, though British 
still and always, is launched on its individual career ; 
and it is not of them that we are speaking now, but of 
the Englishmen who remain at home, of the present- 
day population of the British Isles. 

What would be the result if suddenly the limits of 
the British Isles were to be miraculously expanded ? 
What would happen if the floor of the ocean heaved 
itself up and Great Britain awoke to find the coast of 
Cornwall and Wales mysteriously reaching westward, 
the Irish Sea no more than a Hudson Eiver which 
barely kept the shores of Lancashire and Cumberland 
from touching Ireland, — an Ireland of which the 
western coast — the coast of Munster and Connaught 
— was prolonged a thousand leagues towards the setting 
sun ; while the west coast of the north of Scotland, 
Eoss and Sutherland, had absorbed the Hebrides and 
stretched unbroken into two thousand miles of plain 
and mountain range — Britain no longer but Atlantis 
come again and all British soil ? It was to nothing 
less miraculous that the thirteen original States fell 
heir. And what would be the effect on the British 
race ? 

Coal and iron, silver and gold, rivers full of fish, 
forest and prairie teeming with game, pasture for mil- 



9 6 The Twentieth Century American 

lions of cattle, wheat land and corn land, cotton land 
and orchard for any man who chose to take them; — the 
wretches struggling and stifling in the London slums 
having nothing to do but grasp axe and rifle and go 
out to subdue the wilderness ; — farms, not by the half- 
acre, but by the hundred acres for every one of the un- 
employed. Is it possible to doubt that the race would 
be strengthened, not materially only, but in its moral 
qualities, — that Englishmen in another generation 
would not only be a wealthier and a more powerful 
people but a healthier, lustier, nobler? How then are 
we to suppose that just such a change, such an uplift- 
ing, has not come about in that other British people to 
whom all this has happened, who came into their won- 
derful birthright four generations ago and for a century 
and a quarter have been fashioning it to their will and 
being fashioned by it after the will of Another? By 
what process of logic, English reader, are you going to 
convince yourself that this race — your own with larger 
opportunities — is not the finer race of the two ? 

I have not, be it observed, expressed the opinion 
that the American national character is finer than the 
English; only that it is finer than the European com- 
monly supposes. Nor am I expressing such an opinion 
now but only setting forth certain elementary consider- 
ations for the reader's judgment When the European 
sees in the individual American, or in a dozen individ- 
ual Americans, certain peculiarities, inelegancies, and 
sometimes even impertinences — call them what you 
will, — he is too prone to think that these are the essen- 
tials of the American character. The essentials of the 
American character are the essentials of the English 
character — with elbow-room. " While the outlook of 



Mutual Misunderstandings 97 

the New Yorker is wider than ours," says Mr. Archer, 
" his standpoint is the same." In that elbow-room, 
with that wider outlook, it is likely that new offshoots 
from the character will have developed — excrescences, 
not perhaps in themselves always lovely — but if we 
remember what the trunk is from which they spring, or 
what it was, we shall probably think better, or less, of 
those excrescences, while remembering also the likeli- 
hood that in the larger room and richer soil the trunk 
itself may also have expanded and strengthened and 
solidified. 

The English reader might decide for himself what 
justification there is for supposing that the character of 
that offset from the British stock which, a century and 
a quarter ago, was put in possession of this magnificent 
estate should have deteriorated rather than improved 
as compared with the character of that portion of the 
stock which remained rooted in the old soil hemmed in 
between the ancient boundaries. 

There have been, of course, many other influences 
at work in the moulding of the American character, 
besides the mere vastness of his continent; but the 
fact remains that this has been immensely the most 
powerful of all the factors. English originally, the 
American is still English in his essentials, modified 
chiefly by the circumstances of his material environ- 
ment, the magnificence of his estate, the width of his 
horizons, the disciplining of his nature by the Titanic 
struggle with the physical conditions of the wilderness 
and the necessary development of those qualities of 
resourcefulness, buoyancy, and self-reliance which the 
exigencies of that struggle have demanded. Moreover, 



9^ The Twentieth Century American 

what is almost the most important item of all, his 
entire national life has been lived, and that struggle 
conducted, in practical isolation from all contact with 
other peoples. Immigrants, indeed, from all of them, 
the United States has constantly been receiving ; but 
as a nation the American people has been singularly 
segregated from the rest of the earth, blessedly free 
from friction with, and dependence on, other countries. 
As we have seen, it has had no friction with any Power 
except Great Britain ; and with Great Britain itself so 
little that Englishmen hardly recall that it has occurred. 
It may be worth while to stop one minute to rehearse 
and to re-enforce the points which so far it has been my 
aim to make. 

For their own sakes, anything like conflict between 
the two nations is not to be dreamed of ; but, for the 
world's sake, an intimate alliance between them in the 
cause of peace would be the most blessed conceivable 
thing. There is every justification for such an alliance, 
not merely in the incalculable benefits that would re- 
sult, but in the original kinship of the peoples, the per- 
manent and fundamental sympathy of their natures, and 
their community of ambitions and ways of thought. 
Unfortunately these reasons for union have been 
obscured by a century of aloofness, so that to-day nei- 
ther people fully understands the other and they look, 
one at the other, from widely different standpoints. 
By reason chiefly of their isolation, in which they have 
had little contact with other peoples, the Americans 
have come to think of Great Britain as little less 
foreign (and by the accidents of their history as even 
more hostile) than any other Power. Still acknowledg- 



Mutual Misunderstandings 99 

ing as an historical fact the original kinship, they, like 
many a son who has gone out iDto the world and pros- 
pered exceedingly, take pleasure chiefly in contemplat- 
ing how far they have travelled since they struck out 
for themselves and how many characteristics they have 
developed which were not part of the inheritance from 
the old stock. Dwelling on these they have become 
blind to the essential family likeness to that old stock 
which still remains their dominant trait. Moreover, 
seeing how during all these years the old folk have let 
them go their own way, seemingly indifferent to their 
future, at times, intentionally or not, making that future 
none the easier of accomplishment, they have come to 
nurse a resentment against those at home and will not 
believe that the family still bears them an affectionate 
good-will quite other than it feels for even the best- 
liked of the friends who are not of the same descent. 

On England's part, she saw the younger ones go out 
into the world with regret, strove to restrain them un- 
wisely, obstinately, unfairly — and failed. Since then 
she has been very busy, supremely occupied with her 
own affairs. The young ones who had gone out into 
the world in, as seemed to her, such headstrong fash- 
ion, for all that she knows now that she was wrong, have 
been doing well, and she has always been glad to hear 
it, but — well, they were a long way off. At times she has 
thought that the young ones were somewhat too push- 
ing—too anxious to get on regardless of her or others' 
welfare, — and half-heartedly (not all unintentionally, 
but certainly with no thought of alienating the affection 
of the others) she has interfered or passively stood in the 
young folk's way. At last the day came when she was 
horrified to find that the younger branch — very prosper- 



ioo The Twentieth Century American 

ous and independent now — had not only ceased to re- 
gard her as a mother but had come almost to the point of 
holding her as an enemy. It was at first incredible and 
she strove as best she could to put matters right and to 
explain how foreign to her wishes it was and how un- 
natural it seemed to her that there should be any ap- 
proach to ill-feeling between them. But she does not 
convince the other, partly because she herself has in 
her turn grown out of touch with that others ideas. 
At intervals she has met members of the younger 
branch who have come home to visit and she has dis- 
covered all sorts of new tricks of manner, new ways of 
speech, new points of view that they have picked up in 
their new surroundings, and, like the members of the 
younger branch themselves, she sees more of these lit- 
tle things than she does of the character that is behind 
them. Her vision of the family likeness is blurred by 
the intrusion of provoking little points of difference. 
She sees the mannerisms, but the strength of the quali- 
ties of which they are manifestations escapes her. 

So it comes about that the two are at cross purposes. 
" We may call this country Daughter," wrote G. "W. 
Steevens, "she does not call us Mother." The elder 
sincerely desires the affection of the younger — sincerely 
feels affection herself ; but is hampered in making the 
other realise her sincerity by a constant desire to criti- 
cise those little foreign ways that the other has acquired. 
Just so does a parent obscure her love for a son by de- 
ploring the strange manners which he picks up at 
school ; just so is she blinded to his real qualities as a 
man, because he will insist on giving his time to mess- 
ing about with machinery instead of settling down 
properly to study for the Church. 



Mutual Misunderstandings IC, r 

Burke (was it not ?) spoke of his love for Ireland as 
"dearer than could be justified to reason." English- 
men might well have difficulty in justifying to their 
reason their affection for America; for to hear an 
Englishman speak of American peculiarities and ec- 
centricities, it would often seem that to love such men 
would be pure unreason. But these criticisms are no 
true index to the British national feeling for the Ameri- 
cans as a people. Does a brother not love his sister 
because he says rude things about her little failings? 
Americans hear the criticisms and, their own hearts 
being alienated from Great Britain, cannot believe that 
Britishers have any affection for them. 

I am well aware that I make — and can make — no 
general statement from which many readers, both in 
England and America, will not dissent. Englishmen 
will arise to say that they do not love America; and 
Americans — many Americans — will vow with their 
hands on their hearts that they have the greatest affec- 
tion for Great Britain. Vast numbers of Americans 
will protest against being call a homogeneous people, 
and a vast number more against the accusation of 
being still essentially English ; the fact being that it is 
no easier now than it was in the days of Burke (I am 
sure of my author this time) to "draw up an indictment 
against a whole people." A composite photograph is 
commonly only an indifferent likeness of any of the 
individuals — least of all will the individual be likely 
to recognise it as a portrait of himself. But the type- 
character will stand out clearly — especially to the eyes 
of others not of the type. Most of the notions of 
Englishmen about Americans are drawn from the 



io2 The Twentieth Century American 

casual contact with individual Americans in England 
(where from contrast with their surroundings the little 
peculiarities stand out most conspicuously) or from 
the hasty "impressions" of visitors who have looked 
only on the surface — and but a small portion of that 
Even, I am aware, after a lifetime spent in studying 
the two peoples, in pondering on their likenesses and 
unlikenesses and striving to measure the feeling of 
each for the other, there is always danger of talking 
what I will ask to be permitted to call "parsnips." 

When I first went to the United States I carried 
with me a commission from certain highly reputable 
English papers to incorporate my " impressions " in 
occasional letters. Among the earliest facts of any 
moment which I was enabled to communicate to Eng- 
lish readers was that the middle classes in America (I 
was careful to explain what the " middle classes " 
were in a country where none existed) — that the mid- 
dle classes, I say, lived almost entirely on parsnips. I 
had not arrived at this important ethnological fact 
with any undue haste. I had already lived in the 
United States for some three months, half of which 
time had been spent in New York hotels and boarding 
houses and half in Northern New York and rural New 
England, where, staying at farms or at the houses of 
families in the smaller towns to which T bore letters of 
introduction, I flattered myself that I had probed deep 
— Oh, ever so deep ! — below the surface and had come 
to understand the people as they lived in their own 
homes. And my ripened judgment was that the bulk 
of the well-to-do people of the country supported life 
chiefly by consumption of parsnips. 



Mutual Misunderstandings io 3 

Some fifteen years later I was at supper at the Cen- 
tury Club in New York and the small party at our 
table as we discussed the scalloped oysters (which are 
one of the pillars of the Century) included a well- 
known American author and journalist and an even 
better known and much-loved artist. But why should 
I not mention their names ? They were Montgomery 
Schuyler and John La Farge. Both had been to 
Europe that year — La Farge to pay his first visit to 
Italy, while Schuyler, whether with or without La 
Farge I forget, had made a somewhat extensive trip 
through rural England in, I think, a dog-cart. The 
conversation ran chiefly on their experiences and sud- 
denly Schuyler turned to me with : " Here, you Eng- 
lishman, why do the middle classes of England live 
chiefly on parsnips ? " 

The thing is incredible — except that it happened. 
Schuyler, no less than I fifteen years before, spoke 
in the fulness of conviction arising from what he, no 
less than I, believed to have been wide and adequate 
experience. The memory of that experience has made 
me tolerant of the cocksure generalisations with which 
the Englishman who has visited America, or the 
American who has been in England, for a few months 
delights to regale his compatriots on his return. Quite 
recently a charming American women who is good 
enough to count me among her friends, was in London 
for the first time in her life. She is perhaps as typical 
a representative of Western American womanhood— 
distinctively Western — as could be found ; very good 
to look upon, warm-hearted, fearless and earnest in her 
truth-loving, straightforward life. But in voice, in 
manner, and in frankness of speech she is peculiarly 



104 The Twentieth Century American 

and essentially Western. She loved England and 
English people, so she told me at the Carlton on the 
eve of her return to America, — just loved them, but 
English women (and I can see her wrinkling her eye- 
brows at me to give emphasis to what she said) were 
so dreadfully outspoken : they did say such awful 
things ! I thought I knew the one Englishwoman 
from whose conversation she had derived this idea and 
remembering my own parsnips, I forgave her. She 
has, since her return, I doubt not, dwelt often to her 
friends on this amazing frankness of speech in English- 
women. And if she only knew what twenty English- 
women thought of her outspokenness ! 

Not long ago I heard an eminent member of the 
medical profession in London, who had just returned 
from a trip to Canada and the United States with 
representatives of the British Medical Association, tell- 
ing a ring of interested listeners all about the politics, 
geography, manners, and customs of the people of 
America. Among other things he explained that in 
America there was no such thing known as a table 
d' hote; all your meals at hotels and restaurants had to be 
ordered a la carte. " I should have thought," he said, 
" that a good table d 1 hote at an hotel in New York and 
other towns would pay. It would be a novelty." It 
may be well to explain to English readers who do not 
know America, that fifteen years ago a meal a la carte 
was, and over a large part of the country still is, prac- 
tically unknown in the United States. The system of 
buying one's board and lodging in instalments is known 
in America as "the European plan." 

If it would not be too long a digression, I would ex- 
plain how this is a cardinal principle of the American 



Mutual Misunderstandings 105 

business mind. The disposition of every American is 
to take over a whole contract en bloc, which in Eng- 
land, where every man is a specialist, would be split 
into twenty different transactions. The American 
thinks in round numbers : " What will the whole 
thing come to? " he asks; while the Englishman wants 
to know the items. This habit permeates American 
life in every department. It is labour-saving. Few 
things amuse or irritate the American visitor to Eng- 
land more than the having to pay individually for a 
number of small conveniences which at home he is ac- 
customed to have " thrown in " ; and the first time 
when he is presented with an English hotel bill (I am 
not speaking of the modern semi- American hotels in 
London) with its infinite list of items, is an experience 
that he never forgets. 

All of which is only to explain that the distinguished 
physician, when he spoke of the absence of tables d'hote 
in America, was talking parsnips. His experience had 
been limited to a few hotels and restaurants in New 
York and one or two other large towns. 

If only it were possible to catch in some great " re- 
ceiver " or "coherer," or some similar instrument, all 
the things that were said in London in the course of 
twenty-four hours about the United States by people 
who had been there, and all the things that were said in 
New York in the same period about England by people 
of equal experience, and set them down side by side, 
it would make entertaining reading. The wonder is, 
not that we misunderstand each other as much as we 
do, but that somehow we escape a vast mutual, inter- 
national contempt. 

Several times in the course of my residence in the 



106 The Twentieth Century American 

United States I have had said to me : " What ! Are 
you an Englishman? But you don't drop your H's! " 

Which is ridiculous, is it not, English reader ? But 
before you smile at it, permit me to explain that it is 
no whit worse than when you say : — " What ! Are you 
an American ? But you don't speak with an accent ! " 
Or possibly you call it a "twang " or you say " speak 
through your nose." 

You may be dining, English reader, at, let us say, 
the Carlton or Savoy when a party of Americans 
comes into the room — Americans of the kind that 
every one knows for Americans as soon as he sees or 
hears them. The women are admirably dressed — per- 
haps a shade too admirably — and the costumes of the 
men irreproachable. But there is that something of 
manner, of walk, of voice which draws all eyes to them 
as they advance to their table, and the room is hushed 
as they arrange their seats. " Those horrid Americans ! " 
says one of your party and no one protests. But at the 
next table to you there is seated another party of 
delightful people — low-voiced, well-mannered, excel- 
lently bred in every tone and movement. You wonder 
dimly if you have not met them somewhere. At all 
events you would very much like to meet them. They 
are infinitely more distressed than you at the behaviour 
of the American party which has just come in — be- 
cause they are Americans also. And I may add that 
they will not be in the least flattered, if you should be 
lucky enough to meet them, by your telling them that 
you "never would have thought it." 

Perhaps, English reader, you have lived long enough 
in some other country than England to have learned 
what a loathsome thing the travelling Englishman often 



Mutual Misunderstandings 107 

appears. Possibly you have been privileged to hear the 
frank and unofficial opinion of some native of that 
country — an opinion not intended for your ears, but 
addressed to a compatriot of the speaker — of English 
people in general, based upon his experience of those 
whom he has seen. Such an experience is quite illu- 
minating. I know few things more offensive than the 
behaviour of a certain class of German when he is in 
Paris. The noisy, nasal American at the Carlton or 
Savoy is no more representative of America than the 
loud-voiced, check-suited Englishman at Delmonico's 
or the Waldorf-Astoria is the man by whom you wish 
your nation to be judged. It may be a purposeful 
provision of a higher Power that the people of all coun- 
tries should appear unprepossessing when they are 
abroad, for the fostering in each nation of the spirit of 
patriotism ; for why should any of us be patriots if all 
the foreigners who came to our shores were as inoffen- 
sive as ourselves ? The truth is that those who are 
inoffensive pass unnoticed. It is the occasional cari- 
cature — the parody — of the national type that catches 
our eye ; and on him we too often base our judgment 
of a whole people. 

Those Englishmen who only England know are 
inclined to think that the check-suited fellow-country- 
man is a creation of the French and German comic 
press. Those who have lived outside of England for 
some considerable number of years have learned better. 
The late Senator Hoar in his Autobiography of Sev- 
enty Years has some very shrewd remarks about 
Matthew Arnold. The Senator had a cordial regard 
for Matthew Arnold — "a huge liking" he calls his 
feeling, — and he has this delightful sentence in regard 



108 The Twentieth Century American 

to him : "I do not mean to say that his three lec- 
tures on translating Homer are the greatest literary 
work of our time. But I think, on the whole, that I 
should rather have the pair of intellectual eyes which 
can see Homer as he saw him, than any other mental 
quality I can think of." "But" — and mark this — 
" Mr. Arnold has never seemed to me fortunate in his 
judgment about Americans . . . The trouble with 
Mr. Arnold is that he never travelled in the United 
States when on this side of the Atlantic. . . . He vis- 
ited a great City or two, but never made himself ac- 
quainted with the American people. He never knew 
the sources of our power or the spirit of our people." 

Senator Hoar, with a generous nature made thrice 
generous by the mellowness of years, speaking of the 
man he hugely liked, tempered the truth to a more than 
paternal mildness. But it is the truth. Matthew 
Arnold, to put it bluntly, was wrong-headed in his 
judgment of America and Americans to a degree which 
one living long in the United States only comes slowly 
and reluctantly to understand. And if he so erred, 
how shall all the lesser teachers from whom England 
gets its knowledge of America keep straight? 

But what the American people really objected to in 
Matthew Arnold was not any blundering things that he 
said of them, but the fact that he wore on inappropriate 
occasions in New York a brown checked suit. 

And across all the gulf of more than twenty years 
there looms up in my memory — "looms like some 
Homer-rock or Troy-tree " — the figure of the Hon. 

S y B 1 flaunting his mustard coloured suit, 

gridironed with a four-inch check, across three thou- 



Mutual Misunderstandings 109 

sand miles of continent, to the delight of cities, filling 
prairies with wonder and moving the Rocky Mountains 
to undisguised mirth. And how could we others 
explain that he, with his undeniably John-Bull-like 
breadth of shoulder and ruddy face, was not a fair 
sample of the British aristocrat? Was he not an 
Honourable and the son of a Baron and the " real 
thing" in every way? I have no doubt that there 
still live in the prairie towns of North Dakota and 
in the recesses of the mountains of Montana hun- 
dreds of men and women, grown old now, who through 
all the mists of the years still remember that lamentable 
figure ; and to them, though they may have seen and 
barely noticed ten thousand Englishmen since, the typi- 
cal Britisher still remains the Hon. S y B 1. 

It is not possible to say how far the influence of one 
man may extend. I verily believe that twenty years 
ago those clothes of Matthew Arnold stood for more in 
America's estimate of England than the Alabama in- 
cident. Ex-President Cleveland, as we have seen, 
speaks of the " sublime patriotism and devotion to their 
nation's honour " of the " plain people of the land " who 
backed him up when war with Great Britain seemed 
to be so near. But I wonder in how many breasts the 
desire for war was inspired not by patriotism but by 

memory of the Hon. S y B 1. And when the 

Englishman thinks of the possibility of war with the 
United States, with whom is it that he pictures himself 
as fighting? Some one individual American, whom he 
has seen in London, drunk perhaps, certainly noisy and 
offensive. Such a one stands in the mind of many an 
Englishman who has not travelled as the type of the 
whole people of the United States. 



no The Twentieth Century American 

If it were possible for the two peoples to come to 
know each other as they really are — if one half of the 
population of each country could for a season change 
places with one half of the other, so that all the individ- 
uals of both nations would be acquainted with the ways 
and thoughts of the other, not as the comic artists draw 
them, nor as they are when they are abroad, but as they 
live their daily lives at home — then indeed would all 
thought of difference between the two disappear, and 
war between them be as impossible as war between 
Surrey and Kent. 



CHAPTEE V 
The American Attitude towards Women 

The Isolation of the United States — American Ignorance of 
the World — Sensitiveness to Criticism — Exaggeration of their 
Own Virtues — The Myth of American Chivalrousness — Whence 
it Originated — The Climatic Myth — International Marriages — 
English Manners and American — The View of Womanhood in 
Youth — Co-education of the Sexes — Conjugal Morality — The 
Artistic Sense in American Women — Two Stenographers — An 
Incident of Camp-Life — " Molly-be-damned " — A Nice Way of 
Travelling — How do they do it? — Women in Public Life — The 
Conditions which Co-operate — The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again. 

It will be roughly true to say that the Englishman's 
misunderstanding of America is generally the result 
of misinformation — of " parsnips " — of having had re- 
ported to him things which are superficial and untrue; 
whereas the American's misunderstanding of England 
is chiefly the result of his absorption in his own affairs 
and lack of a standard of comparison. The Americans 
as a people have been until recently, and still are in 
only a moderately less degree, peculiarly ignorant of 
other peoples and of the ways of the world. 

This has been unfortunate, so far as their judgment 
of England is concerned, in two ways, — first, as has 
already been said, because they have had no opportun- 
ity of measuring Great Britain against other nations, 
so that one and all are equally foreign, and second and 
more positively, in the general misconception in the 



ii2 The Twentieth Century American 

American mind as to the character and aims of the 
British Empire and the temper of British rule. From 
the same authorities, the popular histories and school 
manuals, as supplied the American people for so long 
with their ideas of the conduct of the British troops in 
the Revolutionary War, they also learned of India and 
the British; and the one fact which every American, 
twenty years ago, knew about British India was that 
the English blew Sepoys from the mouths of cannon. 
Every American youth saw in his school history a 
picture of the thing being done. It helped to point 
the moral of British brutalities in the War of Inde- 
pendence and it was beaten into the plastic young 
minds until an impression was made which was never 
effaced. Of late years not a few Americans have 
arisen to tell the people something of the truth about 
British rule in India — of its uprightness, its benefi- 
cence, its tolerance, — but it will be a generation yet 
before the people as a whole has any approximate 
conception of the facts. 

It was in no way to the discredit of the American 
people — and enormously to their advantage — that they 
were for so long ignorant of the world. How should 
they have been otherwise when separated from that 
world by three thousand miles of ocean? They had, 
moreover, in the problems connected with the estab- 
lishment of their own government, and the expansion 
of that government across the continent, enough to 
occupy their thoughts and energies. For a century 
the people lived self-concentrated, introspective, their 
minds filled only with thoughts of themselves. If 
foreign affairs were discussed at all it was in curiously 
childlike and impracticable terms. The nation grew 



American Attitude Towards Women 113 

up a nation of provincials (there is no other word for 
it), with a provincialism which was somewhat modified, 
but still provincial, in the cities of the Atlantic coast, 
and which, after all, had a dignity of its own from the 
mere fact that it was continent- wide. 

The Spanish-American War brought the people 
suddenly into contact with the things of Europe and 
widened their horizon. The war itself was only an 
accident ; for the growth of American commerce, the 
increase of wealth, the uncontainable expansive force 
of their industrial energy, must have compelled a 
departure from the old isolation under any circum- 
stances. The quarrel with Spain did but furnish, as it 
were, a definite taking-off place for the leap which had 
to be made. 1 Since then, foreign politics and foreign 
affairs have acquired a new interest for Americans. 
They are no longer topics entirely alien from their 
every-day life and thoughts. It would still be absurd 
to pretend that the affairs of Europe (or for that matter 
of Asia) have anything like the interest for Americans 
that they have for Europeans, or that the educated 
American is not as a rule still seriously uninformed on 
many matters (all except the bare bones of facts and 
dates) of geography, of ethnology, of world-politics 
which are elementary matters to the Englishman of 
corresponding education ; 3 but with their debut as a 

1 The English reader will find this explained at length in Mr. 
A. R. Colquhoun's work, Greater America. 

2 That Americans may understand more clearly what I mean 
and, so understanding, see that I speak without intention to 
offend, I quote from the list of " arrangements" in London for 
the forthcoming week, as given in to-day's London Times, those 
items which have a peculiarly cosmopolitan or extra-British 
character : 



ii4 The Twentieth Century American 

World-Power — above all with the acquisition of their 
colonial dependencies — Americans have become (I use 
the phrase in all courtesy) immensely more intelligent 
in their outlook on the affairs of the world. With a 
longer experience of the difficulties of colonial govern- 
ment, they will also come to appreciate more nearly at 
its true value the work which Great Britain has done 
for humanity. 

Americans may retort that their knowledge of 
Europe was at least no scantier than the Englishman's 
knowledge of America, and the mistakes of travelling 
Englishmen in regard to the size, the character, and the 
constitution of the country have been a fruitful source 
of American witticism. But why should Englishmen 

Friday — Pilgrims' Club, dinner to Lord Curzon of Kedleston, 
ex- Viceroy of India. 

Saturday — Lyceum Club, dinner in honour of France to 
meet the French Ambassador and members of the Embassy, etc. 

Sunday — Te Deum for Greek Independence, Greek Church, 
Moscow Road. 

Monday — Royal Geographical Society, Sir Henry MacMahon 
on " Recent Exploration and Survey in Seistan." 

Tuesday — Royal Colonial Institute, dinner and meeting. 
Royal Asiatic Society. Major Yost on " Kapilavastu." China 
Association, dinner to Prince Tsai-tse and his colleagues, Mr. 
R. S. Grundy, C. B., presiding. 

"Wednesday — Central Asian Society, Mr. A. Hamilton on 
" The Oxus River." Japan Society, Professor J. Takakusu on 
" Buddhism as we Find it in Japan." 

This, it should be explained, is not a good week, because it is 
" out of the season," but the list will. I fancy, as it stands suf- 
fice to give American readers an idea of the extent to which 
London is in touch with the interests of all the world — an idea 
of how. by comparison, it is impossible to speak of New York 
(and still more of America as a whole) as being other than non- 
cosmopolitan, or in a not offensive sense, provincial. 



American Attitude Towards Women 115 

know anything of the United States ? The affairs of 
the United States were, after all, however big, the af- 
fairs of the United States and not of any other part of 
the rest of the world ; while the affairs of Europe were 
the affairs of all the world outside of the United States. 
Undoubtedly the American could fairly offset the 
Englishman's ignorance of America against the Ameri- 
can's ignorance of England ; but what has never failed 
to strike an Englishman is the American's ignorance 
of other parts of the world, which might be regarded 
as common to both. They were not common to both ; 
for, as has been said, since the beginning of her his- 
tory, which has stretched over some centuries, England 
has been constantly mixed up with the affairs, not only 
of Europe, but of the remoter parts of the earth, while 
the United States for the single century of her history 
has lived insulated and almost solely intent on her 
own affairs. So though the American has no ade- 
quate retort against the Englishman for his ignorance, 
he need not defend it. It has been an accident of his 
geographical situation and needs no more apology than 
the Rocky Mountains. But, like the Eocky Moun- 
tains, it is a fact which has had a distinct influence on 
his character. It is probably unavoidable that a peo- 
ple — as an individual — which lives a segregated life, 
with its thoughts turned almost wholly on itself, 
should come to exaggerate, perhaps its own weaknesses, 
but certainly its virtues. 

The boy who lives secluded from companionship, 
when he goes out into the world, will find not merely 
that he is diffident and sensitive about his own defects, 
real or imaginary, but that he is different from other 
people. It may take him all his life to learn — perhaps 



n6 The Twentieth Century American 

he will never learn — that his emotional and intellectual 
experiences are no prodigies of sentiment and phoe- 
nixes of thought, but the common experiences of half 
his fellows. It has been such a life of seclusion that 
the American people lived — though they hardly know 
it (and perhaps some American readers will resent the 
statement), because the mere fact of their seclusion has 
prevented them from seeing how secluded, as compared 
with other peoples, they have been. It is true that in- 
dividual Americans of the well-to-do classes travel more 
(and more intelligently) than any other people except 
the English ; but this, as leavening the nation, is a 
small off-set against the daily lack of mental contact 
with foreign affairs at home. 

But if this sheltered boy be further occasionally sub- 
jected to the inspection and criticism of some one from 
the outside world — a candid and outspoken elderly 
relative — he is likely to become, on the one hand, mor- 
bidly sensitive about those things which the other finds 
to blame, and, on the other, no less puffed up with 
pride in whatever is awarded praise. 

Both these tendencies have been acutely developed 
in the American character — an extraordinary sensitive- 
ness to criticism by outsiders of certain national foibles, 
and a no less conspicuous belief in the heroic propor- 
tions of their good qualities. For surely no people 
has ever been blessed in its seclusion with such an 
abundance of criticism of singular candour. The frank 
brutality with which the travelling Englishman has 
made his opinions known on any peculiar trait or un- 
usual institution which he has been pleased to think 
that he has noticed in the United States has been vastly 
more ill-mannered than anything in the manners of the 



American Attitude Towards Women 1 1 7 

Americans themselves on which he has animadverted 
so freely. The thing most comparable to it — most 
nearly as ill-mannered — is, perhaps, the frank brutality 
with which the travelling American expresses himself 
— and herself — in regard to things in Europe. In it, 
in fact, we see again another aspect of the same funda- 
mentally English trait, — the insistence on the sover- 
eignty of the individual — and Americans come by it 
legitimately. Every time that they display it they do 
but make confession of their original Anglo-Saxon 
descent and essentially English nature. The English- 
man in America has, however, had some excuse for 
his readiness to criticise, in the interest, the anxiety, 
with which, at least until recent years, the Americans 
have invited his opinions. But if that has gone some 
way to justify his expression of those opinions, it has 
furnished no sort of excuse for the lack of tact and 
breeding which he has shown in the process. The 
American does not commonly wait for the invitation. 

"My! But isn't that quaint! Now in America 
we . . ." etc. So speaks an uncultivated American 
on seeing something that strikes him — or her — as novel 
in London, not unkindly critical, but anxious to give 
information about his country — and uninvited. But 
whereas the Englishman is so accustomed to the abuse 
and criticism of other peoples that the harmless chatter 
of the American ripples more or less unheeded by 
him, the American, less case-hardened in his isolation, 
hears the Englishman's bluntly worded expression of 
contempt, and it hurts. It does not hurt nearly as 
much now as it did twenty years ago ; but the harm 
has largely been done. 

The harm would not be so serious but for the 



n8 The Twentieth Century American 

American sensitiveness bred of his seclusion, — if that is 
(at the risk of seeming to repeat myself I must again 
say) he knew enough of the world to know that he 
himself has precisely the same critical inclination as the 
Englishman and that it is a trait inherited from common 
ancestors. The Anglo-Saxon race acquired early in its 
life the conviction that it was a trifle better than any 
other section of the human kind. And it is justified. 
We — Americans and Englishmen alike — hold that we 
are better than any other people. That the root-trait 
has developed somewhat differently in the two por- 
tions of the family is an accident. 

The Englishman — who, when at home, has himself 
lived, not entirely secluded, but in a measure shut off 
from contact with other peoples — by continual going 
abroad and never-ceasing friction with his neighbours, 
by perpetual disheartenment with the perplexities of 
his colonial empire, has become less of a critic than a 
grumbler ; and to do him justice he is, in speech, in- 
finitely more contemptuous of his own government 
than he is of the American or any other. The Ameri- 
can on the contrary remains cheerfully, light-heartedly, 
garrulously critical. He comes out in the world and 
gazes on it young-eyed, and he prattles : " My father 
is bigger than your father, and my sister has 
longer hair than yours, and my money box is larger 
than yours." It is neither unkindly meant nor, by 
Englishmen, very unkindly taken. It is less offensive 
that the mature, corrosive sullenness of the English- 
man ; but it is the same thing. " The French foot- 
guards are dressed in blue and all the marching 
regiments in white ; which has a very foolish appear- 
ance. And as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for 



American Attitude Towards Women 119 

the blue horse or the Artillery," says the footman in 
Moore's Zeluco. 

Similarly, when he has been praised, the lad has 
plumed himself unduly on the thing that found ap- 
proval. He would not do it now ; for the American 
people of to-day is, as it were, grown up ; but, 
again, the harm has been done. Americans rarely 
make the mistake of underestimating the excellence 
of their virtues. Nor is it their fault, but that of their 
critics. 

The American people labours under delusions about 
its own character and qualities in several notable par- 
ticulars. It exaggerates its own energy and spirit of 
enterprise, its sense of humour and its chivalrousness 
towards women. That it should be aware that it pos- 
sesses each of these qualities in a considerable degree 
would do no harm, for self-esteem is good for a nation ; 
but it believes that it possesses them to the exclusion 
of the rest of mankind. And that is unfortunate ; for 
it makes the individual American assume the lack of 
these qualities in the English and thereby decreases 
his estimate of the English character. I am not en- 
deavouring to reduce the American's good opinion of 
himself — only to make him think better of the English- 
man by assuring him that in each of these particulars 
there is remarkably little to choose between them. 
And what excellence he has in each he owes to the 
fact that he is in the main English in origin. 

That Americans should think that they have a higher 
respect for womanhood than any other people is not 
surprising ; for every other people thinks precisely the 
same thing. They would be unique among peoples if 
they thought otherwise. Frenchman, German, Italian, 



120 The Twentieth Century American 

Spaniard, Greek — each and every one who has not 
had his eyes opened by travel and knowledge of 
the world believes, with no less sincerity of conviction 
than the American, that to him alone of all peoples has 
it been vouchsafed to know how duly to reverence the 
divine feminine. To the Englishman it seems that the 
German not seldom treats his wife much as if she were 
a cow ; and he is sometimes distressed at the way in 
which, for all the pretty things he says to her, the 
Frenchman, not of the labouring classes only, will al- 
low his wife to work for and wait on him. While the 
language which an Italian can, on occasions, use 
towards the partner of his joys is, to English ears, ap- 
palling. But each goes on serenely satisfied of his own 
superiority. You others, you may pay lip-service, yes ; 
but deep down, in the heart of hearts — we know. The 
American has as good a right to this same foible as any 
other ; but what is to be noted is that whereas English- 
men laugh at the pretensions of Continental peoples, 
they have been willing to accept the chivalry of the 
American at his own valuation : the fact being that the 
valuation is not originally American, but was made by 
the travelling Englishmen of the past who communi- 
cated their appraisement to the people at home as well 
as to the American whom they complimented. English- 
men of the present day have accepted the belief as an 
inheritance and without question ; for it was at least a 
generation and a half ago that the myth first obtained 
vogue, and the two facts most commonly adduced in its 
support by the English visitors who spread it were, 
first, that women could walk about the streets of New 
York or any other American city, unattended and 
at such hours as pleased them, without being insulted ; 



American Attitude Towards Women I21 

and, second (absurdly enough), the provision of special 
" ladies' entrances " to hotels, which seem to have enor- 
mously impressed several English visitors to the United 
States who afterwards wrote their " impressions." 

For the first of these, it is a mere matter of local cus- 
tom and police regulation. When it is understood 
that in certain streets of certain cities, at certain 
hours of the day, no women walk unattended except 
such as desire to be insulted, it is probable that 
other women, who go there in ignorance, will suffer 
inconvenience. Nor has the difference in local custom 
any bearing whatever on the respective morality of 
different localities. These things are arranged differ- 
ently in different countries ; that is all. Moreover, in 
this particular a great change has come over American 
cities in late years, nor are all American cities or all 
English by any means alike. 

A similar change has come in the matter of " ladies' 
entrances " to hotels. If the provision of the separate 
doors was a sign of peculiar chivalry, are we then to 
conclude that their disappearance shows that chivalry is 
decaying? By no means. It only means that the ho- 
tels are improving. The truth is that as the typical 
old-fashioned hotel was built and conducted in Amer- 
ica, with the main entrance opening directly from the 
street into the large paved lobby, where men congre- 
gated at all hours of the day to talk politics and to spit, 
where the porters banged and trundled luggage, and 
whither, through the door opening to one side, came the 
clamour of the bar-room, it was out of the question that 
women should frequent that common entrance. Had a 
hotel constructed and managed on the same principles 
been set down in any English town, women would have 



i22 The Twentieth Century American 

declined to use it at all, nor would Englishmen have 
expected their womenfolk to do so. Americans 
avoided the difficulty by creating the " ladies' entrance." 
But it was no evidence of superior chivalry on the part 
of the people that, having devised a place not fit for 
woman's occupancy and more unpleasant than was to 
be found in any other part of the world, they provided 
(albeit rather inadequate) means by which women 
could avoid visiting it. 

Once I saw two young English girls — sweet girls, 
tall and graceful, with English roses blooming in their 
cheeks — come down-stairs in the evening, after dinner, 
as they might have done in any hotel to which they 
had been accustomed in Europe, to the lobby of the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. It was a time of 
some political excitement and there are enough men 
living now who remember what the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel used to be at such seasons twenty years ago. 
The girls — it was probably their first night on Ameri- 
can soil and they could not stand being cooped up 
in their room upstairs all the evening — made their way 
to the nearest seat and sat down clinging each to the 
other's hand. Around them surged perhaps a hundred 
men, chewing, spitting, smoking, slapping each other 
on the backs, and laughing coarsely. The girls gazed 
in wonder and with visibly increasing embarrassment 
for perhaps five minutes, before they slipped away, the 
roses in their cheeks doubly carmine and still clinging 
each to the other's hand. 

For the benefit of my companion (whose appearance 
indicated an Englishman) an American on an adjoining 
seat held forth to his friends on what he called the 
" indecency " of the conduct of the girls in coming 



American Attitude Towards Women 123 

down to the public hall and the "effrontery" of 
Englishwomen in general. 

In hotels of the modern type there is no need for 
women to use a separate entrance or to draw their 
skirts aside and hurry through the public passages. 
But it is sad if we must conclude that the building of 
such hotels is an evidence of dying national chivalry. 

Every A merican firmly believes that he individually, 
as well as each of his countrymen, has by heritage a 
truer respect for womanhood than the peoples of less 
happy countries are able to appreciate. But many 
Americans also believe that every Englishman is rough 
and brutal to his wife, who does daily all manner of 
menial offices for him, a belief which is probably akin 
to the climatic fiction and of Continental origin. In 
the old days, when there was no United States of 
America, the peoples of the sunny countries of South- 
ern Europe jibed at the English climate ; and with 
ample justification. English writers have never denied 
that justification — in comparison with Southern Europe; 
and volumes could be compiled of extracts from Eng- 
lish literature, from Shakespeare downwards, in abuse 
of British fog and mist and rain. But because Nice 
and Naples are entitled to give themselves airs, under 
what patent do Chicago and Pittsburgh claim the same 
right ? "Why should Englishmen submit uncomplain- 
ingly when Milwaukee and Duluth arrogate to them- 
selves the privilege of sneering at them which was 
conceded originally and willingly enough to Cannes ? 
Riverside in California, Columbia in South Carolina, 
Colorado Springs or Old Point Comfort — these, and 
such as they, may boast, and no one has ground for 
protest ; but it is time to " call for credentials " when 



12 4 The Twentieth Century American 

Buffalo, New Haven, and St. Paul and the rest propose 
to come in in the same company. If, in the beginning of 
things, English writers had had to compare the British 
climate not with that of Europe but with the northern 
part of the United States, the references to it in English 
literature would constitute a hymn of thanksgiving. 

As the case stands, however, the people of all parts 
of the United States alike, in many of which mere ex- 
istence is a hardship for some months in the year, are 
firmly convinced that the inhabitants of the British 
Isles are in comparison with themselves profoundly to 
be pitied for their deplorable climate; and it is prob- 
able that the prevailing idea as to the Englishman's 
habitual treatment of his wife has much the same 
origin. It is an inheritance of the Continental belief 
that John Bull sold his womenfolk at Smithfield. 
The frequency of international marriages and the con- 
tinued stream of travel across the Atlantic is, of course, 
beginning to correct the popular American point of 
view, but there are still millions of honest and intelli- 
gent people in the United States who, when they read 
that an American girl is going to be married to an 
Englishman, pity her from their hearts in the belief 
that, for the sake of a coronet or some such bauble, 
she is selling herself to become a sort of domestic 
drudge. 

Occasionally also even international marriages turn 
out unhappily ; and whenever that is the case the 
American people hear of it in luxuriant detail. But 
of the thousands of happy unions nothing is said. 
Not many years ago there was a conspicuous case, 
wherein an American woman, whom the people of the 
United States loved much as Englishmen loved the 



American Attitude Towards Women 125 

Empress Frederick or the Princess Alice, failed to find 
happiness with an English husband. Of the rights 
and wrongs of that case, neither I nor the American 
people in the mass know anything, but it is the gener- 
ally accepted belief in the United States that the 
lady's husband was some degrees worse than Blue- 
beard. I would not venture to hazard a guess at the 
number of times that I have heard a conversation on 
this subject clinched with the argument : " Well, now, 

look at N Gr !" Against that one instance 

the stories of a thousand American women who are 
living happy lives in Europe would not weigh. If 
they do not confess their unhappiness, indeed, " it is 
probably only because they are proud, as a free-born 
American girl should be, and would die rather than to 
let others know the humiliations to which they are 
subjected." 

" Oh, yes, you Englishmen ! " an American woman 
will say, "your manners are better than our American 
men's and you are politer to us in little things. But 
you despise us in your hearts ! " It is an argument 
which, in anything less than a lifetime, there is no way 
of disproving. American men also, of course, habitu- 
ally comfort themselves with the same assurance, viz., 
— that with less outward show of courtesy, they cherish 
in their hearts a higher ideal of womanhood than an 
Englishman can attain to. Precisely at what point this 
possession of a higher ideal begins to manifest itself in 
externals does not appear. After twenty years of 
intimacy in American homes I have failed to find any 
trace of it. 

Let me not be misunderstood ! I know scores of 
beautiful homes in the United States, in many widely 



i26 The Twentieth Century American 

sundered cities, where the men are as courteous, as chiv- 
alrous, as devoted to their wives — and where the women 
are as sweet and tender to, and as wholly wrapped 
up in, their husbands — as in any homes on earth. As 
I write, the faces of men and women rise before me, 
from many thousand miles away, whom I admire and 
love as much as one can admire and love one's 
fellow-beings. There are these homes I hope and be- 
lieve — there are noble men and beautiful women find- 
ing and making for themselves and each other the 
highest happiness of which our nature is capable — in 
every country. But we are not now speaking of the 
few or of the best individuals, but of averages ; and after 
twenty years of opportunity for observing I have en- 
tirely failed to find justification for believing that there 
is any peculiar inward grace in the American which 
belies the difference in his outward manner. 

This is, of course, only an individual opinion, 1 which 
is necessarily subject to correction by any one who may 
have had superior opportunities for forming a trust- 
worthy judgment. I contend, however, not as a matter 
of opinion, but as what seems to me to be a certainty, that 
whatever may be the inward feeling in regard to the 
other sex on the part of the men of either nation after 
they have arrived at mature years, the young English- 
man, as he comes to manhood, possesses a much higher 
ideal of womanhood than is possessed by the young 

1 It is worth remarking that Dr. Emil Reich (whose opinion 
I quote not because I attach any value to it personally, but in 
deference to the judgment of those who do) prophesies that the 
"silent war" between men and women in the United States 
" will soon become so acute that it will cease to be silent." It 
is to be borne in mind, of course, that the Doctor's experience 
in the United States has as yet been but inconsiderable. 



American Attitude Towards Women 127 

American of corresponding age. And I hold to this 
positively in spite of the fact that many Americans 
possessing a large knowledge of transatlantic condi- 
tions may very possibly not admit it 

I rejoice to believe that to the majority of English 
youths of decent bringing up, at the age at which they 
commonly leave the public school to go to the uni- 
versity, womanhood still is a very white and sacred 
thing, in presence of which a mere man or boy can but 
be bashful and awkward from very reverence and con- 
sciousness of inferiority, even as it surely was a quarter 
of a century ago and as, at the same time, it as surely 
was not to the youth of the United States. Again, of 
course, in both countries there are differences between 
individuals, differences between sets and cliques ; but I 
am not mistaken about the tone of the English youth 
of my own day nor am I mistaken about the tone of 
the American youths, of the corresponding class, with 
whom I have come in intimate contact in the United 
States. Their language about, their whole mental at- 
titude towards, woman was during my first years in 
America an amazement and a shock to me. It has 
never ceased to be other than repellent 

The greater freedom of contact allowed to the youth 
of both sexes in the United States, and above all the 
co-educational institutions (especially those of a higher 
grade), must of course have some effect, whether for 
good or ill. It may be that the early-acquired know- 
ledge of the American youth is in the long run salutary; 
that his image of womanhood is, as is claimed, more 
"practical," and likely to form a better basis for hap- 
piness in life, than the dream and illusion of the Eng- 
lish boy ; but here we get into a quagmire of mere 



i2& The Twentieth Century American 

speculation in which no individual opinion has any 
virtue whatsoever. 

I am well aware also of the serious offence that will 
be given to innumerable good and earnest people in 
the United States by what I now say. This is no 
place to discuss the question of co-education. I am 
speaking only of one aspect of it, and even if it were 
to be granted that in that one aspect its results are evil, 
that evil may very possibly be outweighed many times 
over by the good which flows from it in other direc- 
tions. Even in expressing the opinion that there is 
this one evil result, I am conscious that I shall call 
down upon myself much indignation and some con- 
tempt. It will be said that I have not studied the 
subject scientifically (which may be true) and that I 
am not acquainted with what the statistics show (which 
is less true), and that my observation has been preju- 
diced and superficial. Let me say however that I 
have been brought to the conclusions to which I have 
been forced not by prejudice but against prejudice and 
when I would have much preferred to feel otherwise. 
Let me also say that my condemnation is not directed 
against the elementary public schools so much as 
against that more select class of co-educational estab- 
lishments for pupils of less juvenile years. It would, 
I think, be interesting to know what percentage of the 
girls at present at a given number of such establish- 
ments are the daughters of parents — fathers especially 
— who were at those same institutions in their youth. 
It is a subject which — so amazed was I, coming with 
an English-trained mind, at certain things which were 
said in incidental conversation — I sought a good many 
opportunities of enquiring into ; with the result that I 



American Attitude Towards Women 129 

know that there are some parents who, though they 
had fifty daughters, would never allow one to go to the 
institutions at which they themselves spent some years. 
And this condemnation covers, to my present memory, 
five separate institutions scattered from the Atlantic 
Coast to the Mississippi River. 

"If you marry an American girl," says Life — I 
quote from memory, — " you may be sure that you will 
not be the first man she has kissed. If yon marry an 
English one, you may be certain you will not be the 
last." 

Whether this is true, viz., that, granting that the 
American girl is, before marriage, exposed to more 
temptation than her English sister, the latter more than 
makes up for it in the freedom of married life, is an- 
other quagmire. No statistics, whether of marriage, of 
divorce, or of the ratio of increase in population, are of 
any use as a guide. Each man or woman, who has had 
any opportunity of judging, will be guided solely by 
the narrow circle of his or her personal experience ; 
and I know that the man whose opinion on the subject 
I would most regard holds exactly opposite views to 
myself — and what my own may be I trust I may be 
excused from stating. But while on the subject 
of the relative conjugal morality of the two peo- 
ples opinions will differ widely with individual ex- 
perience, I have never met a shadow of disagreement 
in competent opinion in regard to the facts about the 
youth of the two countries. It may be, as I have heard 
a clever woman say, that the way for a member of her 
sex to get the greatest enjoyment out of life is to be 
brought up in America and married in England. If so 



i3° The Twentieth Century American 

let us rejoice that so many charming women choose the 
way which opens to them the possibility of the greatest 
felicity. 

There is, of course, a widespread impression in Eng- 
land that American women as a rule are not womanly. 
The average American girl acquires when young a self- 
possession and an ability to converse in company which 
Englishwomen only, and then not always, acquire 
much later in life. Therefore the American girl ap- 
pears, to English eyes, to be " forward," and she is 
assumed to possess all the vices which go with " forward- 
ness " in an English maiden. Which is entirely unjust. 
Let us remember that there is hardly a girl growing up 
in England to-day who would not have been considered 
forward and ill-mannered to an almost intolerable de- 
gree by her great-grandmother. But that the girls of 
to-day are any the less womanly, in all that is sweet 
and essential in womanliness, than any generation of 
their ancestors, I for one do not believe. Nor do I be- 
lieve that in another generation, when they will perhaps, 
as a matter of course, possess all the social precocity (as 
it seems to us) of the American girl of to-day, they will 
thereby be any the less true and tender women than 
their mothers. 

In particular, are American girls supposed to be so 
commercially case-hardened that their artistic sensi- 
bilities have been destroyed. A notorious American 
"revivalist " some years ago returned from a much-ad- 
vertised trip to England and told his American congre- 
gations of the sinfulness which he had seen in the Old 
World. Among other things he had seen, so he said, 
more tipsy men and women in the streets of London in 
(I think) a month than he had seen in the streets of his 



American Attitude Towards Women 13 l 

native town of Topeka, Kansas, in some — no matter 
what — large number of years. Very possibly he was 
right. But he omitted to say that he had also seen 
several million more sober ones. A population of 
6,000,000 frequently contains more drunkards than one 
of 30,000. It also contains more metaphysicians. On 
the same principle it is entirely likely that the Ameri- 
can girl, who talks so much, says many more foolish 
things than the English one who, if she can help it, 
never talks at all. The American girl is only a girl 
after all, and because she has acquired a conversational 
fluency which the Englishwoman will only arrive at 
twenty years later, it is not just to suppose that she 
must also have acquired an additional twenty years' 
maturity of mind. 

Most English readers are familiar with the picture of 
the American girl who flits through Europe seeing 
nothing in the Parthenon or in Whitehall beyond an 
inferiority in size and splendour to the last new insur- 
ance company's building in New York. She has been 
a favourite character in fiction, and the name of the 
artist who first imagined her has long been lost. Per- 
haps she was Daisy Miller's grandmother. In reality, 
in spite of that lack of reverence which is undoubtedly 
a national American characteristic, the average Ameri- 
can woman has an almost passionate love for those glo- 
ries of antiquity which her own country necessarily 
lacks, such as few Englishwomen are capable of feeling. 

" How in our hearts we envy you the mere names 
of your streets ! " said an American woman to me once. 
It is not easy for an English man or woman to conceive 
what romance and wonder cluster round the names of 
Fleet Street and the Mall to the minds of many educated 



13 2 The Twentieth Century American 

Americans. We, if we are away from them for half a 
dozen years, long for them in our exile and rejoice in 
them on our return. The American of sensibility feels 
that he — and more especially she — has been cut off from 
them for as many generations and adores them with an 
ardour proportionately magnified. But he (or she) 
would not exchange Broadway or Fifth Avenue or 
Euclid Avenue or the Lake Shore Drive, as the case 
may be, for all London. 

It was once my fortune to show over Westminster 
Abbey an American woman whose name, by reason of 
her works — sound practical common-sense works, — has 
come to be known throughout the United States, and 
I heard "the wings of the dead centuries beat about 
her ears." I took her to Poet's Corner. She turned 
herself slowly about and looked at the names carved 
on either side of her, and then looked down and saw the 
names that lay graven beneath her feet; and she 
dropped sobbing on her knees upon the pavement. 
Johnson was not kind to the American colonies in his 
life. Those tears which fell upon his name, where it is 
cut into the slab of paving, were part of America's 
revenge. 

"We all remember Kipling's "type- writer girl "in 
San Francisco, — " the young lady who in England 
would be a Person," — who suddenly quoted at him 
Theophile Gautier. It is an incident which many Eng- 
lishmen have read with incredulity, but which has 
nothing curious in it to the American mind. A steno- 
grapher in my own offices subsequently, I have heard, 
married a rich owner of race-horses and her dinners I 
understand are delightful. She was an excellent 
stenographer. 



American Attitude Towards Women 133 

In all frontier communities, where women are few 
and the primitive instincts have freer play than in more 
artificial societies, there blossoms a certain rough and 
ready chivalrousness which sets respect of womanhood 
above all laws and makes every man a self-constituted 
champion of the sex. This may be seen in a thousand 
communities scattered over the farther West ; but it is 
no outgrowth of the American character, for it flour- 
ishes in all new societies in all parts of the world, no 
matter to what nationality the men of those societies 
belong. 

In a certain mining camp, late at night, a man — a 
man of some means, the son of a banker in a neigh- 
bouring town — was walking with a woman. Neither 
was sober and the woman fell to the ground. The 
man kicked her and told her to get up. As she did 
not comply he cursed her and kicked her again. Then 
chanced to come along one Ferguson, a gambler and a 
notoriously "bad man," who bade the other stop abus- 
ing the woman, whereupon he was promptly told to go 

to and mind his own business. Ferguson replied 

that if the other touched the woman again he would 
shoot him. It was at this point that the altercation 
brought me out of my cabin, for the thing was happen- 
ing almost where my doorstep (had I had a doorstep) 
ought to have been. The banker's son paid no heed to 
the warning, and once more proceeded to kick the 
woman. Thereupon Ferguson shot him. And, with 
the weapon which Ferguson carried and his ability as 
a marksman, when he shot, it might be safely regarded 
as final. 

No attempt was made to punish Ferguson. The 
deputy sheriff, arriving on the scene, heard his story 



134 The Twentieth Century American 

and mine and those of one or two others who had 
heard or seen more or less of what passed ; and Fergu- 
son was a free man. Nor was there any shadow of a 
suggestion in camp that justice should take any other 
course. The fact was established that the dead man 
had been abusing a woman. Ferguson had only done 
what any other man in camp must have done under 
the same circumstances. 

And while the banker's son was a person of some 
standing, there was certainly nothing in her whom he 
had maltreated, beyond her mere womanhood, to con- 
stitute a claim on one grain of respect. 

I trust that I am not reflecting on the chivalry of 
the camp when I record the fact that the name by 
which the lady was universally known was " Molly- 
be-damned." The camp, to a man, idolised her. 

One of my earliest revelations of the capacity of the 
American woman was vouchsafed to me in this way: 

A party of us, perhaps fifteen in all, had travelled a 
distance of some two thousand miles to assist at the 
opening of a new line of railway in the remote North- 
west. We duly arrived at the little mountain town at 
which the junction was to be made between the line 
running up from the south and that running down 
from the north, over which we had come. The cere- 
mony of driving the last spike was conducted with due 
solemnity, after which a " banquet " was given to us by 
the Mayor and citizens of the small community. After 
the banquet — which was really a luncheon — we again 
boarded our train to complete the run to the southern 
end of the line, a number of the citizens of the town 
with their wives accompanying us on the jaunt It 



American Attitude Towards Women 135 

chanced to be my privilege to escort to the car, and 
for the remainder of the journey to sit beside, the wife 
of the editor of the local paper. She was pretty, 
charming, and admirably dressed. We talked of 
many things, — of America and England, of the red 
Indians, and of books, — when in a pause in the conver- 
sation she remarked : 

" I think this is such a nice way of travelling, don't 
you?" 

It puzzled me. What did she mean ? Was she re- 
ferring to the fact that we were on a special train com- 
posed of private cars, or what ? The truth did not at 
first occur to me — that she was referring to railway 
travelling as a whole, it being the first time that she 
had ever been on or seen a train. Explanations fol- 
lowed. She had been brought by her parents, soon 
after the close of the Civil War, when two or three 
years old, across the plains in a prairie schooner (the 
high-topped waggon in which the pioneers used to make 
their westward pilgrimage), taking some four months 
for the trip from the old home in, I think, Kentucky. 
At all events she was a Southerner. Since then dur- 
ing her whole life she had known no surroundings but 
those of the little mining settlement huddled in among 
the mountains, her longest trips from home having 
been for a distance of thirty or forty miles on horse- 
back or on a buckboard. She had lived all her life in 
log cabins and never known what it meant to have a 
servant. She read French and Italian, but could not 
take any interest in German. She sketched and 
painted, and was incomparably better informed on 
matters of art than I, though she knew the Masters 
only, of course, through the medium of prints and en- 



136 The Twentieth Century American 

gravings. What she most dearly longed to do in all 
the world was to see a theatre — Irving for choice — and 
to hear some one of the Italian operas, with the libretti 
of which, as well as the music, so far as her piano 
would interpret for her, she was already familiar. 

Now at last the railway had come and she was, from 
that day forward, within some six days' travelling of 
New York ; and her husband had faithfully promised 
that they should go East together for at least three or 
four weeks that winter. And as she sat and talked in 
her soft Southern voice, there in the heart of the wilds 
which had been all the world to her, she might, so far 
as a mere man's eyes could judge, have been dropped 
down in any country house in England to be a con- 
spicuously charming member of any charming house- 
party. 

Familiarity with similar instances, though I think 
with none more striking, has robbed the miracle, so far 
as its mere outward manifestation is concerned, of 
something of its wonder ; but the inward marvel of it 
remains as inexplicable as ever. By what power or 
instinct do they do it ? With nothing of inheritance, 
so far as can be judged, to justify any aspirations 
towards the good or beautiful, among the poorest and 
hardest of surroundings, with none but the most mea- 
gre of educational facilities, by what inherent quality 
is it that the American woman, not now and again 
only, but in her tens of thousands, rises to such an 
instinctive comprehension of what is good and worth 
while in life, that she becomes, not through any exter- 
nal influence, but by mere process of her own develop- 
ment, the equal of those who have spent their lives 
amid all that is most beautifying and elevating of what 



American Attitude Towards Women 137 

the world has to afford ? When she takes her place, 
graciously and composedly, as the mistress of some 
historic home or amid the surroundings of a Court, we 
say that it is her "adaptability." But adaptability can 
do no more than raise one to the level of one's sur- 
roundings — not above them. Is it ambition? But 
whence derived? And by what so tutored and guided 
that it reaches only for what is good? How is it tem- 
pered that she remains all pure womanly at the last ? 

It may be that the extent to which, especially in the 
Western States, American women of wealth and posi- 
tion are called upon to bear their share in public work 
— in the management of art societies, the building of 
art buildings and public libraries, the endowment 
and conduct of hospitals, and in educational work of 
all kinds — gives them such an opportunity of showing 
the qualities which are in them, as is denied to their 
English sisters of similar position but who live in older 
established communities. And there are, of course, 
women in England who lead lives as beautiful and as 
beneficent as are lived anywhere upon earth. The 
miracle is that the American woman — and, again I say, 
not now and again but in her tens of thousands — be- 
comes what she is out of the environment in which 
her youth has so often been lived. 

It will be necessary later to refer to the larger 
part played by American women, as compared with 
English, in the intellectual life of the country, — a 
matter which itself has, as will be noticed, no little 
bearing on the question of the merits and demerits 
of the co-education of the sexes. The best intel- 
lectual work, the best literary work, the best artis- 
tic work, is still probably done by the men in the 



i3 8 The Twentieth Century American 

United States ; but an immensely larger part of that 
work is done by women than in England, and in ordi- 
nary society (outside of the professional literary and 
artistic circles) it is the women who are generally best 
informed, as will be seen, on literature and art. To 
which is to be added the fact that they take a much 
livelier and more intelligent interest than do the 
majority of Englishwomen in public affairs, and assume 
a more considerable share of the work of a public or 
quasi-public character in educational and similar mat- 
ters. It might be supposed that this greater promin- 
ence of women in the national life of the country was 
in itself a proof that men deferred more to them and 
placed them on a higher level; but when analysed it 
will be found far from being any such proof. Bather 
is woman's position an evidence of, and a result of, 
man's neglect. By which it is not intended to imply 
any discourteous or inconsiderate neglect ; but merely 
that American men have been, and still are, of neces- 
sity more busy than Englishmen, more absorbed in 
their own work, whereby women have been left to live 
their own lives and thrown on their own resources 
much more than in England. The mere pre-occupa- 
tion of the men, moreover, necessarily leaves much 
work undone which, for the good of society, must be 
done; and women have seized the opportunity of doing 
it. They have been especially ready to do so, inas- 
much as the spirit of work and of pushfulness is in the 
atmosphere about them, and they have been educated 
at the same schools as the men. The contempt of men 
for idleness, in a stage of society when there was 
more than enough work for all men to do, necessarily 
extended to the women. It is not good, in the 



American Attitude Towards Women 139 

United States, for any one, woman hardly more than 
man, to be idle. 

Women being compelled to organise their own lives 
for themselves, they carried into that organisation the 
spirit of energy and enthusiasm which tilled the air of 
the young and growing communities. Finding work 
to their hands to do, they have done it — taking, and in 
the process fitting themselves to take, a much more 
prominent part in the communal life than is borne by 
their sisters in England or than those sisters are to- 
day, in the mass, qualified to assume. Precisely so 
(as often in English history) do women, in some be- 
leaguered city or desperately pressed outpost, turn 
soldiers. No share in, or credit for, the result is to be 
assigned to any peculiar forethought, deference, or 
chivalrousness on the part of the men, their fellows in 
the fight. It is to the women that credit belongs. 

And while we are thus comparing the position of 
women in America with their position in England, it is 
to be noted that so excellent an authority among 
Frenchmen as M. Paul Carnbon, in speaking of the 
position of women in England, uses precisely the same 
terms as an Englishman must use when speaking of 
the conditions in America. Americans have gone a 
step farther — are a shade more " Feminist " — than the 
English, impelled, as has been seen, by the peculiar 
conditions of their growing communities in a new 
land. But it is only a step and accidental. 

Englishmen looking at America are prone to see 
only that step, whereas what Frenchmen or other Con- 
tinental Europeans see is that both Englishmen and 
Americans together have travelled far, and are still 
travelling fast, on a path quite other than that which 



Ho The Twentieth Century American 

is followed by the rest of tlie peoples. In their view, 
the single step is insignificant. What is obvious is 
that in both is working the same Anglo-Saxon trait — 
the tendency to insist upon the independence of the 
individual. Feminism — the spirit of feminine pro- 
gress — is repugnant to the Roman Catholic Church ; 
and we would not look to see it developing strongly in 
Roman Catholic countries. But, what is more import- 
ant, it is repugnant to all peoples which set the com- 
munity or the state or the government before the 
individual, that is to say to all peoples except the 
Anglo-Saxon. 

We see here again, as we shall see in many things, 
how powerless have been all other racial elements in 
the United States to modify the English character of 
the people. The weight of all those elements must be, 
and, so far as they have any weight, is directly against 
the American tendency to feminine predominance. All 
the Germans, all the Irish, all the Frenchmen, Span- 
iards, Italians, or other foreigners who are in the 
United States to-day or have ever come to the United 
States have not, as Germans, or Irish, or Frenchmen, 
contributed among them one particle, one smallest 
impulse, to the position which women hold in the life 
of the country to-day ; rather has it been achieved in 
defiance of the instincts and ideas of each of those by 
the English spirit which works irrepressibly in the 
people. There could hardly be stronger testimony to 
the dominating quality of that spirit. One may ap- 
prove of the conditions as they have been evolved ; or 
one may not. One may be Feminist or anti-Feminist. 
But whether it be for good or evil, the position which 
women hold in the United States to-day they hold by 



American Attitude Towards Women J 4 r 

virtue of the fact that the American people is Anglais — 
an English or Anglo-Saxon people. 

And in spite of all the precautions that I have taken 
to make myself clear and to avoid offence, I feel that 
some word of explanation, lest I be misunderstood, is 
still needed. It is not here said that American men do 
not place woman on a higher plane than any Continen- 
tal European people. I earnestly believe that both 
branches of the Anglo-Saxon stock do hold to a higher 
ideal of womanhood than some (and for all I know 
to the contrary, than all) of the peoples of Europe. 
What I am denying is that Americans have any 
greater reverence for women, any higher chivalrous- 
ness, than Englishmen. And this denial I make 
not with any desire to belittle the chivalry of American 
men but only in the endeavour to correct the popular 
American impression about Englishmen, which does 
not contribute to the promotion of that good-will which 
ought to exist between the peoples. I am not suggest- 
ing that Americans should think less of themselves, 
only that, with wider knowledge, they would think 
better of Englishmen. 

And, on the subject of co-education, it seems that 
yet another word is needed, for since this chapter was 
put into type, it has had the advantage of being read 
by an American friend whose opinion on any subject 
must be valuable, and who has given especial attention 
to educational matters. He thinks it would be judi- 
cious that I should make it clearer than I have done 
that, in what I have said, I am not criticising the 
American co-educational system in any aspect save 
one. He writes: 



H 2 The Twentieth Century American 

" The essential purpose of the system of co-education 
which had been adopted, not only in the "State uni- 
versities supported by public funds, but in certain 
colleges of earlier date, such as Oberlin, in Ohio, and 
in comparatively recent institutions like Cornell Uni- 
versity, of New York, is to secure for the women 
facilities for training and for intellectual development 
not less adequate than those provided for the men. 

" It was contended that if any provision for higher 
education for women was to be made, it was only equita- 
ble, and in fact essential, that such provision should be 
of the best. It was not practicable with the resources 
available in new communities, to double up the ma- 
chinery for college education, and if the women were 
not to be put off with instructors of a cheaper and 
poorer grade and with inadequate collections and lab- 
oratories, they must be admitted to a share of the ser- 
vice of the instructors, and in the use of the collections, 
of the great institutions. 

"It is further contended by well-informed people 
that what they call a natural relation between the 
sexes, such as comes up in the competitive work of 
university life, so far from furthering, has the result 
of lessening the risk of immature sentiment and of 
undesirable flirtations. By the use of the college 
system, the advantages of these larger facilities can be 
secured to women, and have in fact been secured with- 
out any sacrifice of the separate life of the women 
students. 

" In Columbia University, for instance (in New York 
City), the women students belong to Barnard College. 
This college is one of the seven colleges that constitute 
Columbia University : but it possesses a separate foun- 



American Attitude Towards Women H3 

dation and a faculty of its own. The women students 
have the advantage of the university collections and of 
a large number of the university lectures. The rela- 
tion between the college and the university is in certain 
respects similar to that of Newnham and Girton with 
the University of Cambridge, with the essential differ- 
ence that Barnard College constitutes, as stated, an 
integral part of the university, and that the Barnard 
students are entitled to secure their university degrees 
from A.B. to Ph.D." 

From the above it is by no means certain that on the 
one point on which I have dwelt, his opinion coincides 
with mine; and the best explanation thereof that I can 
offer is that while he knows certain parts of the coun- 
try and some institutions better than T, I know certain 
parts of the country and some institutions better than 
he. And we will " let it go at that." 

As for the rest, for the general economic advantages 
of the co-educational system to the community, I think 
I am prepared to go as far as almost anyone. I am 
even inclined to follow Miss M. Carey Thomas, the 
President of Bryn Mawr College, who attributes the 
industrial progress of the United States largely to the 
fact that the men of the country have such well-edu- 
cated mothers. It seems to me a not unreasonable or 
extravagant suggestion. I am certainly of the opinion 
that the conversational fluency and mental alertness of 
the American woman, as well as in large measure her 
capacity for bearing her share in the civic labour, are 
largely the result of the fact that she has in most cases 
had precisely the same education as her brothers. 

At present I believe that something more than one. 
half (56 per cent.) of the pupils in all the elementary 



144 The Twentieth Century American 

and secondary schools, whether public or private, in 
the United States are girls ; and that the system is 
permanently established cannot be questioned. What 
are known as the State universities, that is to say 
universities which are supported entirely, or almost 
entirely, by State grants, or by annual taxes ordered 
through State legislation, have from their first founda- 
tion been available for women students as well as for 
men. The citizens, who, as taxpayers, were contrib- 
uting the funds required for the foundation and the 
maintenance of these institutions, took the ground, 
very naturally, that all who contributed should have 
the same rights in the educational advantages to be 
secured. It was impossible from the American point 
of view to deny to a man whose family circle included 
only daughters the university education, given at pub- 
lic expense, which was available for the family of sons. 

Co-education had its beginning in most parts of the 
United States in the fact that in the frontier communi- 
ties there were often not enough boy pupils to support 
a school nor was there enough money to maintain a 
separate school for girls ; but what began experimen- 
tally and as a matter of necessity has long become an 
integral part of the American social system. So far 
from losing ground it is continually (and never more 
rapidly than in recent years) gaining in the Universi- 
ties as well as in the schools, in private as well as 
public institutions. 

But, as I said in first approaching the subject, the 
merits or demerits of co-education are not a topic which 
comes within the scope of this book. It was neces- 
sary to refer to it only as it impinged on the general 
question of the relation of the sexes. 



CHAPTER VI 
English Humour and American Art 

American Insularity — A Conkling Story — English Humour 
and American Critics — American Literature and English Crit- 
ics — The American Novel in England — And American Art — 
Wanted, an American Exhibition — The Revolution in the 
American Point of View — "Raining in London" — Domestic 
and Imported Goods. 

It is no uncommon thing to hear an American speak 
of British insularity — the Englishman's "insular pre- 
judices " or his " insular conceit." On one occasion I 
took the opportunity of interrupting a man who, I was 
sure, did not know what "insular" might mean, to ask 
for an explanation. 

" Insular? " he said. " It 's the same as insolent — 
only more so." 

Flings at Britain's "insularity" were (like the cli- 
matic myth) originally of Continental European origin; 
and from the Continental European point of view, the 
phrase, both in fact and metaphor, was justified. Eng- 
land is an island. So far as the Continent of Europe 
is concerned, it is the island. And undoubtedly the 
fact of their insular position, with the isolation which it 
entailed, has had a marked influence on the national 
temperament of Englishmen. Ringed about with the 

10 145 



146 The Twentieth Century American 

silver sea, they had an opportunity to meditate at leis- 
ure on their superiority to other peoples, an opportunity 
which, if not denied, was at least restricted in the case 
of peoples only separated from neighbours of a differ- 
ent race by an invisible frontier line, a well bridged 
stream, or a mountain range pierced by abundant 
passes. Their insularity bred in the English a dispo- 
sition different from the dispositions of the Continental 
peoples just as undeniably as it kept them aloof from 
those peoples geographically. 

Vastly more than Great Britain, has the United 
States been isolated since her birth. England has been 
cut off from other civilisations by twenty miles of sea ; 
America by three thousand. As a physical fact, the 
" insularity " of America is immensely more obvious 
and more nearly complete than that of Britain ; and it 
is no less so as a moral fact. It is true that America's 
island is a continent ; but this superiority in size has 
only resulted in producing more kinds of insularity 
than in England. The American character is, in all 
the moral connotation of the word, pronouncedly more 
insular than the British. 

Like the English, except that they were much more 
effectively staked off from the rest of the world, the 
Americans have found the marvel of their own supe- 
riority to all mankind a fit and pleasing subject for 
contemplation. Perhaps there was a time when Eng- 
lishmen used to go about the world talking of it ; but 
for some generations back, having settled the fact of 
their greatness entirely to their satisfaction, they have 
ceased to put it into words, merely accepting it as the 
mainspring of their conduct in all relations with other 
peoples, and without, it is to be feared, much regard 



English Humour and American Art 147 

for those other peoples' feelings. Americans are still 
in the boasting stage. Mr. Howells has said that every 
American when he goes abroad goes not as an indi- 
vidual citizen but as an envoy. He walks wrapped in 
the Stars and Stripes. It is only the insularity of the 
Britisher magnified many times. 

It is as if there were gathered in a room a dozen or 
so of well-bred persons, talking such small talk as will 
pass the time and hurt no susceptibilities. It may be 
that the Englishman in his small talk is unduly dog- 
matic, but in the main he complies with the usages of 
the circle and helps the game along. To them enters 
a newcomer who will hear nothing of what the others 
have to say — will take no share in the discussion of 
topics of common interest — but insists on telling the 
company of his personal achievements. It may be all 
true ; though the others will not believe it. But the 
accomplishments of the members of the present com- 
pany are not at the moment the subject of conversa- 
tion ; nor is it a theme under any circumstances which 
it is good manners to introduce. This is what not a 
few American people are doing daily up and down 
through the length and breadth of Europe; and they 
must pardon Europe if, occasionally, it yawns, or if at 
times it expresses its opinions of American manners 
in terms not soothing to American ears. 

"The American contribution to the qualities of 
nations is hurry," says the author of The Champagne 
Standard, and this has enough truth to let it pass as 
an epigram ; but many Americans have a notion that 
their contribution is neither more nor less than All 
Progress. With their eyes turned chiefly upon them- 
selves, they have seen beyond a doubt what a splendid, 



148 The Twentieth Century American 

energetic, pushful people they are, and they have talked 
it all over one with another. Moreover, have not many 
visitors, though finding much to criticise, complimented 
them always on their rapidity of thought and action? 
So they have come to believe that they monopolise those 
happy attributes and, going abroad, whenever they see 
— it may be in England, or in Germany — an evidence 
of energy and force, they say: "Truly the world is 
becoming Americanised!" Bless their insular hearts! 
America did not invent the cosmic forces. 

When the first suspension bridge was thrown over 
Niagara, there was a great and tumultuous opening 
ceremony, such as the Americans love, and many of 
the great ones of the United States assembled to do 
honour to the occasion, and among them was Roscoe 
Conkling. Conkling was one of the most brilliant 
public men whom America has produced: a man of 
commanding, even beautiful, presence and of, perhaps, 
unparalleled vanity. He had been called (by an 
opponent) a human peacock. After the ceremonies at- 
tending the opening of the bridge had been concluded, 
Conkling, with many others, was at the railway station 
waiting to depart ; but, though others were there, he 
did not mingle with them, but strutted and plumed 
himself for their benefit, posing that they might get 
the full effect of all his majesty. 

One of the station porters was so impressed that, 
stepping up to another who was hurrying by trundling 
a load of luggage, he jerked his thumb in Conkling's 
direction and : 

"Who's that feller?" he asked. "Is he the man 
as built the bridge ? " 

The other studied the great man a moment. 



English Humour and American Art 149 

" Thunder ! No," said he. " He 's the man as made 
the Falls." 

It is curious that with their sense of humour Ameri- 
cans should so persistently force Europeans into the 
frame of mind of that railway porter. The English- 
man, in his assurance of his own greatness, has come to 
depreciate the magnitude of whatever work he does; 
nor is it altogether a pose or an affectation. He sees the 
vastness of the British Empire and the amazing strides 
which have been made in the last two generations, and 
wonders how it all came about. He knows how 
proverbially blundering are British diplomacy and 
British administration, so he puts it all down to the 
luck of the nation and goes grumbling contentedly on 
his way. There is no country in which policies have 
been so haphazard and unstable, or ways of administra- 
tion so crude and so empirical, as in the United States. 
"Go forth, my son," said Oxenstiern, "go forth and 
see with how little wisdom the world is governed "; and 
on such a quest, it is doubtful if any civilised country 
has offered a more promising field for consideration 
than did the United States from, say, the close 
of the Civil War to less than a decade ago. All 
thinking Americans recognise this fact to the 
full ; but whereas the Englishman sees only the 
blunders that he has made and marvels at the luck 
that pulled him through, the American generally 
ignores the luck and is more likely to believe that 
whatever has been achieved is the result of his pecul- 
iar virtues. 

I never heard an American ascribe the success of 
any national undertaking to the national luck. The 
Englishman on the other hand is for ever speaking 



150 The Twentieth Century American 

of the "luck of the British Army," and the "luck that 
pulls England through." 

And there is one point which I have never seen 
stated but which is worth the consideration of Ameri- 
cans. It has already been said that it would be of 
great benefit if the American people knew more of 
the British Empire as a whole. They have had an 
advantage in appreciating the magnitude of their own 
accomplishments in the fact that their work has all to 
be done at home. They have had the outward signs of 
their progress constantly before their eyes. It is true 
that the United States is a large country ; but it is con- 
tinuous. No oceans intervene between New York 
and Illinois, or between Illinois and Colorado ; and the 
people as a whole is kept well informed of what the 
people is doing. 

The American comes to London and he sees things 
which he regards with contemptuous amusement 
much as the Englishman might regard some pe- 
culiar old-world institution in a sleepy Dutch com- 
munity. The great work which is always being done 
in London is not easy to see ; there is so much of Old 
London (not only in a material sense) that the new 
does not always leap to the eye. The man who es- 
timates the effective energy of the British people by 
what he sees in London, makes an analogous mistake to 
that of the Englishman who judges the sentiments of 
America by what is told him by his charming friends 
in New York. The American who would get any 
notion of British enterprise or British energy must go 
afield — to the Upper Nile and Equatorial Africa, to 
divers parts of Asia and Australia. He cannot see the 
Assouan dam, the Cape to Cairo Eailway, the Indian 



English Humour and American Art 151 

irrigation works, from the Carlton Hotel, any more 
than a foreigner can measure the destiny of the Ameri- 
can people by dining at the Waldorf-Astoria. 

This is a point which will bear insisting on. Not 
long ago an American stood with me and gazed on the 
work which was being done in the Strand Improve- 
ment undertaking, and he said that it was a big thing. 
" But," he added thoughtfully, " it does not come up to 
what we have on hand in the Panama Canal." I 
pointed out that the Panama Canal was not being cut 
through the heart of New York City and apparently 
the suggestion was new to him. The American rarely 
understands that the British Isles are no more — rather 
less — than the thirteen original states. Canada and 
India are the British Illinois and Florida, Australia 
and New Zealand represent the West from Texas to 
Montana, while South Africa is the British Pacific 
Slope ; just as Egypt may stand for Cuba, and Burma 
and what-not-else set against Alaska and the Philip- 
pines. Many times I have known Americans in Eng- 
land to make jest of the British railways, comparing 
them in mileage with the transcontinental lines of their 
own country. But the British Transcontinental lines 
are thrown from Cairo to the Cape, from Quebec to 
Vancouver, from Brisbane to Adelaide and Peshawar 
to Madras. The people of the United States take 
legitimate pride in the growth of the great institutions 
of learning which have sprung up all over the West ; 
but there are points of interest of which they take 
less account, in similar institutions in, say, Sydney 
and Allahabad. 

It is not necessary to say that I do not underes- 
timate the energy of the American character. I have 



152 The Twentieth Century American 

seen too much of the people, am familiar with too 
many sections of the country, and have watched it all 
growing before my eyes too fast to do that But I 
think that the American exaggerates those qualities in 
himself at the expense of other peoples, and he would 
acquire a new kind of respect for Englishmen — the 
respect which one good workman necessarily feels for 
another — if he knew more of the British Empire. 

A precisely similar exaggeration of his own quality 
has been bred by similar causes in the American mind 
in his estimate of his national sense of humour. I am 
not denying the excellence of American humour, for I 
have in my library a certain shelf to which I go when- 
ever I feel dull, and for the books on which I can 
never be sufficiently grateful. The American's exag- 
geration of his own funniness is not positive but com- 
parative. Just as he is tempted to regard himself as 
the original patentee of human progress, and the first 
apostle of efficiency, so he is very ready to believe that 
he has been given something like a monopoly among 
peoples of the sense of humour. With a little more 
humour, he would undoubtedly have been saved from 
this particular error. Especially are the Americans 
convinced that there is no humour in Englishmen. 
Germans and Frenchmen may possess humour of an 
inferior sort, but not Englishmen. It is my belief that 
in the American clubs where I find copies of Fliegende 
Blatter and the Journal Amusant, these papers are 
much more read than Punch, and in not a few cases, I 
fear, by men who have but slight understanding of the 
languages in which they are printed. Indeed, Punch is 
a permanent, hebdomadally-recurrent proof to Ameri- 
can readers that Englishmen do not know the meaning 



English Humour and American Art 153 

of a joke. Americans, of course, do not understand 
more than a small proportion of the pages of Punch any- 
more than they would understand those pages if they 
were printed in Chinese; but because Punch is printed 
in English they think that they do understand it, and 
because they cannot see the jokes, they conclude that 
the jokes are not there. 

A certain proportion of American witticisms are re- 
condite to English readers for precisely similar reasons, 
but the American belief is that when an Englishman 
fails to understand an American joke, it is because he 
has no sense of humour; when an American cannot 
understand an English one, it is because the joke is not 
funny. It is a view of the situation eminently gratify- 
ing to Americans ; but it is curious that their sense of 
humour does not save them from it. 

Whatever American humour may be, it is not subtle. 
It has a pushfulness — a certain flamboyant self-assert- 
iveness — which it shares with some other things in 
the United States ; and, however fine the quality of 
mind required to produce it, a rudimentary apprecia- 
tive sense will commonly suffice for its apprehension. 
The chances are, when any foreigner fails to catch the 

1 At this point my American friend, to the value of whose 
criticisms I have already paid tribute, interjects marginally : 
" none the less Fliegende Blatter presents more real humour 
in a week than is to be found in Punch in a month." To 
which I can but make the obvious reply that I have already 
said that Americans think so. He points out, however, fur- 
ther that, while the Munich paper is always to be found in the 
higher-class American clubs, it is comparatively infrequent 
in the clubs of Great Britian, which is undoubtedly true ; and 
that is a subject (the relative breadth of outlook on the world- 
literature of the day in the two countries) which will neces- 
sarily receive attention later on. 



154 The Twentieth Century American 

point of an American joke or story, that it is due to 
something other than a lack of perceptive capability. 

What I take to be (with apologies to Mr. Dunne) the 
greatest individual achievement in humorous writing 
that has been produced in America in recent years, the 
Wolfville series of books of Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis, 
is practically incomprehensible to English readers, 
not from any lack of capacity on their part, but from 
the difficulties of the dialect and still more from the 
strangeness of the atmosphere. In the same way the 
Tablets of the scribe Azit Tigleth Miphansi must in- 
deed be but ancient Egyptian to Americans. But it 
would not occur to an Englishman to say, because 
Americans have not within their reach the necessary 
data for a comprehension of Mr. Reed, that, therefore, 
they do not understand a joke. Still less because he 
himself falls away baffled from the Old Cattleman does 
the Englishman conclude that the Wolfville books are 
not funny. He merely deplores his inability to get on 
terms with his author. The English public indeed is 
curiously ready to accept whatever is said to be funny 
and comes from America as being in truth humorous 
even if largely unintelligible; but few Americans would 
give credit for the existence of humour in those parts 
of an English book outside their ken. Yet I think, if 
it were possible to get the opinion of an impartial jury 
on the subject, their verdict would be that the number 
of humorous writers of approximately the first or 
second class is materially greater in England than in 
the United States to-day. I am sure that the sense of 
humour in the average of educated Englishmen is 
keener, subtler, and eminently more catholic than it is 
in men of the corresponding class in the United States, 



English Humour and American Art 155 

The Atlantic Ocean, if the Americans would but 
believe it, washes pebbles up on the beaches of its 
eastern shores no less than upon the western. 1 

American humour [distinctively American humour 
for there are humorous writers in America whose 
genius shows nothing characteristically American ; but 
among those who are distinctively American I should 
class nearly all the writers who are best known to-day, 
Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain), Mr. Dunne, Mr. Lewis, Mr. 
Lorimer, Mr. Ade] — this distinctively American hu- 
mour, then, stands in something the same relation to 
other forms of spirituellisme as the work of the poster 
artist occupies to other forms of pictorial art. Poster 
designing may demand a very high quality of art, 
and the American workmen are the Cherets, Grassets, 
Muchas, of their craft. Few of them do ordinary 
painting, whether in oil or water colour. Fewer still 
use the etcher's needle. None that I am aware of at- 
tempts miniatures — except Mr. Henry James, who, if 
Americans may be believed, is not an American, and 
he has invented a department of art for himself more 
microscopic in detail than that of any miniaturist. 
The real American humourist, however small his 
canvas, strives for the same broad effects. 

It is not the quality of posters to be elusive. Their 
appeal is to the multitude, and it must be instantaneous. 
It is easily conceivable that a person of an educated 
artistic sense might stand before a poster and find him- 

1 Lest any American readers should assume that some per- 
sonal feeling is responsible for my point of view (which would 
entirely destroy any value in my argument) it seems necessary 
to explain that I have become calloused to being told that I am 
the only Englishman the speaker ever met with an American 
sense of humour. Sometimes I have taken it as a compliment. 



156 The Twentieth Century American 

self entirely unable to comprehend it, because the thing 
portrayed might be something altogether outside his ex- 
perience. His failure would be no indictment either of 
his perceptivity or of the merit of the work of art. 

It is a pity that Americans as a rule do not consider 
this, for I know few things that would so much in- 
crease American respect for Englishmen in the mass as 
the discovery that the latter were not the ponderous 
persons they supposed, but even keener-witted than 
themselves. At the time of the Venezuelan incident, 
it is probable that more than all the laborious protests 
of good men on both sides of the ocean, more than all 
the petitions and the interchange of assurances of good- 
will between societies in either country, the thing that 
did most to allay American resentment and bring the 
American people to its senses was that delightful mes- 
sage sent (was it not ?) by the London Stock Exchange 
to their confreres in New York, begging the latter to 
see that when the British fleet arrived in New York 
harbour there should be no crowding by excursion 
steamers. Like Mr. Anstey's dear German professor, 
who had once laboriously constructed a joke and 
purposed, when he had ample leisure, to go about to 
gedificate a second, will Americans please believe that 
Englishmen too, if given time, can certainly make 
others ? 

And need I say again that in each of the things that 
I have said, whether on the subject of American chiv- 
alry, American energy, or American humour, I am 
not decrying the American's qualities but only striving 
to increase his respect for Englishmen ? 

Now let us look at the other side of the picture. 



English Humour and American Art 157 

Just as undue flattery awoke in the American people 
an exaggerated notion of their chivalry and their sense 
of humour, so the reiteration of savage and contemp- 
tuous criticism made them depreciate their general 
literary ability. It goes farther back than the "Who 
ever reads an American book? " Three quarters of a 
century earlier the Edinburgh Review (I am indebted 
for the quotation to Mr. Sparks) asked : " Why should 
Americans write books when a six- weeks' passage brings 
them in their own tongue our sense, science, and genius 
in bales and hogsheads? Prairies, steamboats, grist- 
mills are their natural objects for centuries to come." 

Franklin's Autobiography and Thoreau's Walden are 
only just, within the last few years, beginning to find 
their way into English popular reprints of the "clas- 
sics." Few Englishmen would listen with patience to 
an argument that the contribution to literature of the 
Concord school was of greater or more permanent value 
than, let us say, the work of the Lake Poets. So little 
thought have Englishmen given to the literature of the 
United States, that they commonly assume any author 
who wrote in English to be, as a matter of course, an 
Englishman. It is only the uneducated among the 
educated classes who do not know that Longfellow was 
an American — though I have met such, — but among 
the educated a small percentage only, I imagine, would 
remember, unless suggestion was made to them, that, 
for instance, Motley and Bancroft among historians, or 
Agassiz and Audubon among men of science (even 
though one was born in Switzerland) were Americans. 
To the vast majority, of course, such names are names 
and nothing more, which may not be particularly 
reprehensible. But while on the one hand a general 



158 The Twentieth Century American 

indifference to American literature as a whole has car- 
ried with it a lack of acquaintance with individual 
writers, that lack of acquaintance with the individuals 
naturally reacted to confirm, disbelief in the existence 
of any respectable body of American literature. And 
the chilling and century-long contempt of the English 
public and of English critics for all American writ- 
ing produced its result in a national exaggeration in 
American minds of their own shortcomings. Only 
within the last ten years have Americans as a whole 
come to believe that the work of an American writer 
(excepting only a very small group) can be on a plane 
with that of Englishmen. 

In England the situation has also changed. Ameri- 
can novelists now enjoy a vogue in England that would 
have seemed almost incredible two decades ago. At 
that time the English public did not look to America 
for its fiction, while Americans did look to England ; 
and each new book by a well-known English novelist 
was as certain of its reception in the United States as — 
perhaps more certain than it was — in England. That 
has changed. There are not more than half a dozen 
writers of fiction in England to-day of such authority 
that whatever they write is of necessity accepted by the 
American public. Americans turn now first to their 
own writers — a dozen or a score of them — and only 
then do they seek the English book, alwa} r s provided 
that, no matter whose the name may be that it bears, it 
has won the approval of their own critics on its merits. 
They no longer take it for granted that the best work of 
their own authors is as a matter of course inferior to 
the work of a well-known Englishman. It may not 
be many years before the American public will be so 



English Humour and American Art 159 

much preoccupied with its own literary output — before 
that output will be so amply sufficient for all its needs 
— that it will become as contemptuously indifferent to 
English literature of the day as Englishmen have, in 
the past, shown themselves to the product of American 
writers. There is, perhaps, no other field in which the 
increase of the confidence of the nation in itself is more 
marked than in the honour which Americans now pay 
to their own writers. 

It is worth noticing that the English appreciation 
of American literature as yet hardly extends beyond 
works of fiction. Specialists in various departments of 
historical research and the natural sciences know what 
admirable work is being done in the same fields by in- 
dividual workers in the United States ; but hardly yet 
has the specialist — still less has the general public — 
formed any adequate conception of the great mass of 
that work in those two fields, still less of its quality. 
Englishmen do not yet take seriously either American 
research or American scholarship. It would be absurd 
to count noses to prove that there were more competent 
historians writing — more scientific investigators search- 
ing into the mysteries — in America than in England or 
vice versa; but this I take to be an undoubted fact, 
namely, that men of science in more than one field 
in other countries are beginning to look rather to the 
United States than to Great Britain for sound and 
original work. 

The English ignorance of American literature ex- 
tends even more markedly to other departments of 
productive art. 1 The ordinary educated and art-loving 

1 It is merely pathetic to find such a paper as the London 
Academy at this late day summing up the American aesthetic 



160 The Twentieth Century American 

Englishman would be sore put to it to name any single 
American painter or draughtsman, living or dead, ex- 
cept Mr. C. D. Gibson. Whistler and Sargent, of 
course, are not counted as Americans. There is not a 
single American sculptor whose name is known to one 
in a hundred of, again I say, educated and art-loving 
Englishmen, though I take it to be indisputable that 
the United States has produced more sculptors of 
individual genius in the last half-century than Great 
Britain. American architecture conveys to the edu- 
cated and art-loving Englishman no other idea than 
that of twenty-storey " sky-scrapers " built of steel and 
glass. Richardson is not even a name to him. He 
knows nothing of all the beauty and virility of the 

impulse as follows : " Their culture is now a borrowed thing 
animated by no life of its own. Their art is become a reflection 
of French art, their literature a reflection of English literature, 
their learning a reflection of German learning. A velleity of 
taste in their women of the richer class seems to be all that 
maintains in their country the semblance of a high, serious, and 
disinterested passion for the things of the mind." 

It would be interesting to learn from the Academy what 
school of English writers it is that the American humourists 
" reflect," who among English novelists are the models for the 
present school of Western fiction, where in English historio- 
graphy is to be found the prototype of the great histories of 
their country, collaborated or otherwise, which the Americans 
are now producing, which journals published in England are 
responsible for American newspapers, what English magazine 
is so happy as to be the father of the Century, Harper's, or 
Scribner's. The truth is that the writer in the Academy, like 
most Englishmen, knows nothing of American literature as a 
whole, or he would know that, whether good or bad, the one 
quality which it surely possesses is that it is individual and 
peculiar to the people. The Academy, it is only fair to say, has 
recently changed hands and I am not sure that under its 
present direction it would make the same mistake. 



English Humour and American Art 161 

work that has been done in the last thirty years. In 
the minor arts, he may have heard of Kookwood pot- 
tery and have a vague notion that the Americans turn 
out some quite original things in silver work; but of 
American stained glass— of Tiffany and La Farge — he 
has never heard. It would do England a world of 
good — it would do international relations a world 
of good — if a thoroughly representative exhibition of 
American painting and sculpture could be made in 
London. I commend the idea to some one competent 
to handle it ; for it would, I think, be profitable to 
its promoters. It would certainly be a revelation to 
Englishmen. 

The English indifference to — nay, disbelief in the 
existence of — American art is precisely on a par with 
the American incredulity in the matter of British 
humour; and the removal of each of the misconcep- 
tions would tend to the increase of international good- 
will. Americans believe the British Empire to be a 
sanguinary and ferocious thing. They believe them- 
selves to be possessed of a sense of humour, a sense of 
chivalry, and an energy quite lacking in the English- 
man; and each one of the illusions counts for a good 
deal in the American national lack of liking for Great 
Britain. Similarly, Englishmen believe Americans to 
be a money-loving people without respectable achieve- 
ment in art or literature. I am not sure that it would 
make the Englishman like the American any the more 
if the point of view were corrected, but at least he 
would like him more intelligently, and it would pre- 
vent him from saying things — in themselves entirely 
good-humoured and quite unintentionally offensive — 
which hurt American feelings. We cannot correct an 



1 62 The Twentieth Century American 

error without recognising frankly that it exists, and 
the first step towards making the American and the 
Englishman understand what the other really is must 
be to help each to see how mistaken he is in supposing 
the other to be what he is not. 

That the American should hold the opinions that he 
does of England is no matter of reproach. Not only is 
it natural, but inevitable. Absorbed as he has been 
with his own affairs and his own history, and viewing 
Great Britain only in her occasional relations thereto, 
seeing nothing of her in her private life or of her posi- 
tion and policies in the world at large, how could the 
American have other than a distorted view of her — how 
could she assume right proportions or be posed in right 
perspective ? Nor is the Englishman any more to be 
blamed. America has been beyond and below his 
horizon, and among the travellers' tales that have come 
to him of her people and her institutions has been 
much misinformation ; and if he has not yet — as in the 
realms of literature and art — come to any realisation of 
America's true achievements, how should he have 
done so, when Americans themselves have only just 
shaken off the morbid sensitiveness and diffidence 
of their youth, and have so recently arrived at 
some partial comprehension of those achievements 
themselves? 

Probably the most successful joke which Life ever 
achieved (Americans will please believe that it is not 
with any disrespect that I explain to English readers 
that Life is the Punch of New York), successful, 
that is, measured by the continent-wide hilarity which 
it provoked, had relation to the New York dandy 
who turned up the bottoms of his trousers because it 



English Humour and American Art 163 

was " raining in London." That was published — at a 
guess — some twenty years ago. 

Some ten years later a Chicagoan(one James Norton — 
he died, alas ! all too soon afterwards) leaped into some- 
thing like national notoriety by a certain speech which 
he delivered at a semi-public dinner in New York. In 
introducing Mr. Norton as coming from Chicago the 
chairman had made playful reference to the supposed 
characteristic lack of modesty of Chicagoans and their 
pride in their city. Norton, in acknowledgment, con- 
fessed that there was justice in the accusation. Chi- 
cagoans, he said, were proud of their city. They had a 
right to be. They were as proud of Chicago as New 
Yorkers were of London! And the quip ran from 
mouth to mouth across the continent. 

It would be too much to say that those jokes are 
meaningless to-day, but to the younger generation of 
Americans they have lost most of their point, for 
Anglomania has ceased to be the term of reproach that 
once it was — it has, at least, dropped from daily use — 
partly because the official relations of the country with 
Great Britain have so much improved, but much more 
because the United States has come to consider herself 
as Great Britain's equal and, in the new consciousness 
of her greatness, the idea of toadying to England has 
lost its sting. It is already difficult to throw one's 
mind back to the conditions of twenty years ago — to 
remember the deference which (in New York and the 
larger cities at least) was paid to English ideas, English 
manners, English styles in dress — the enthusiasm with 
which any literary man was received who had some 
pretension to an English reputation — the disrepute in 
which all " domestic " manufactured articles were held 



1 64 The Twentieth Century American 

throughout the country in comparison with the " im- 
ported," which generally meant English. In all manu- 
factured products this was so nearly universal that 
" domestic " was almost synonymous with inferior and 
" imported " with superior grades of goods. That an 
immense proportion of American manufactured articles 
were sold in the United States masquerading as "im- 
ported" — and therefore commanding a better price — 
goes without saying, and in some lines, in which 
the British reputation was too well established and 
well deserved to be easily shaken, the practice still 
survives ; but in the great majority of things, the 
American now prefers his home-made article, not 
merely from motives of patriotism but because he be- 
lieves that it is the better article. It is not within our 
present province to discuss how far this opinion is cor- 
rect, or how far the policy of protection, by assisting 
manufacturers to obtain control of their own markets 
and so distract attention from imported goods, has 
helped to bring about the change. The point is that the 
change has taken place. And, so far as the ordinary 
commodities of commerce are concerned, the English- 
man is in a measure aware of what has occurred. He 
could not be otherwise with the figures of his trade 
with the United States before him. Nor can he con- 
ceal from himself the fact that the change of opinion in 
America may have some justification when he sees how 
many things of American manufacture he himself uses 
daily and prefers — patriotism notwithstanding — to the 
British-made article. 

But Englishmen have little conception as yet that 
the same revolution has taken place in regard to the 
less material — less easily exploited — commodities of 



English Humour and American Art 165 

art and literature. American novels and the drawings 
of Mr. Gibson have made their way in England in the 
wake of American boots and American sweetmeats ; 
but Americans would be unwilling to believe that 
their creative ability ends with the production of 
Western romances and drawings of the American girl. 
Until recent years, the volume as well as the quality 
of the literary and artistic output of Great Britain was 
vastly superior to that of the United States. The two 
were not comparable ; but they are comparable to-day, 
though England is as yet unaware of it. In time, Eng- 
lishmen will awake to a realisation of the fact ; but 
what the relative standing of the two countries will 
be by that time it is impossible to say. Englishmen 
would, perhaps, not find it to their disadvantage, 
and it would certainly (if not done in too condescend- 
ing a spirit) not be displeasing to the people of the 
United States, if they began, even now, to take a 
livelier interest in the work that the other is doing. 



CHAPTER VII 
English and American Education 

The Rhodes Scholarships — "Pullulating Colleges" — Are 
American Universities Superior to Oxford or Cambridge ? — 
Other Educational Forces — The Postal Laws — Ten-cent Mag- 
azines and Cheap Books — Pigs in Chicago — The Press of 
England and America Compared — Mixed Society — Educated 
Women — Generals as Booksellers — And as Farmhands — The 
Value of War to a People. 

It may be presumed that when Cecil Rhodes con- 
ceived the idea of establishing the Rhodes scholarships 
at Oxford, it did not occur to him that Americans 
might not care to come to Oxford — might think their 
own universities superior to the English. Nor is it 
likely that there will in the immediate future be any 
dearth of students anxious to take those scholarships, 
for the mere selection has a certain amount of kudos 
attaching to it and, at worst, the residence abroad 
should be of advantage to any young American not 
destined to plunge at once into a business lifa If it 
were a mere question of the education to be received, 
it is much to be feared that the great majority of 
Americans, unless quite unable to attend one of their 
own universities, would politely decline to come to 
England. At the time when the terms of the will 
were made public, a good many unpleasant things 
were said in the American press; and it was only the 
admiration of Americans for Mr. Rhodes (who appealed 

166 



English and American Education 167 

to their imagination as no other Englishman, except 
perhaps Mr. Gladstone, has appealed in the last fifty 
years), coupled -with the fact that he was dead, that 
prevented the foundation of the scholarships from 
being greeted with resentment rather than gratitude. 

There was a time, of course, when the name of 
Oxford sounded very large in American ears; and it 
will probably be a surprise to Englishmen to be told 
that to-day the great majority of Americans would 
place not only Harvard and Yale, but probably also 
several other American universities, ahead of either 
Oxford or Cambridge. Nor is this the opinion only 
of the ignorant Trained educational authorities who 
come from the United States to Europe to study the 
methods of higher education in the various countries, 
seldom hesitate to say that the education to be obtained 
at many of the minor Western colleges in America is 
fully as good as that offered by either of the great 
English universities, while that of Harvard and Yale 
is far superior to it. 1 And it mast be remembered 
that education itself, as an art, is incomparably more 
studied, and more systematically studied in America 
than in England. 

Matthew Arnold spoke of the "pullulating colleges 

1 What is said above — or at least what can be read between 
the lines — may throw some light on the fact, on which the 
English press happens as I write to be commenting in 
some perplexity, that whereas certain Australians among the 
Rhodes scholars have distinguished themselves conspicuously 
in the schools, the only honours that have fallen to Americans 
have been those of the athletic field. Those journals which 
have inferred therefrom a lack of aptitude for scholarship on 
the part of American youth in general may be amiss in their 
diagnosis. 



1 68 The Twentieth Century American 

and universities " of America — " the multitude of in- 
stitutions the promoters of which delude themselves 
by taking seriously, but which no serious man can so 
take " ; and he would be surprised to see to what pur- 
pose some of those institutions have "pullulated" in 
the eighteen years that have passed since he wrote— 
to note into what lusty and umbrageous plants have 
grown such institutions as the Universities of Chicago 
and Minnesota, though one of those is further west by 
some distance than he ever penetrated. That these or 
any other colleges have more students than either 
Oxford or Cambridge need not mean much ; and they 
cannot of course acquire in twenty years the old, 
history-saturated atmosphere. Against that are to be 
set the facts that the students undoubtedly work, on 
the average, much harder than do English undergrad- 
uates and that the teaching staffs are possessed of an 
enthusiasm, an earnestness, a determination not merely 
to fill chairs but to get results, which would be almost 
" bad form " in some Common (or Combination) Booms 
in England. Wealth, moreover, and magnificence of 
endowment can go a considerable way towards even 
the creation of an atmosphere — not the same atmos- 
phere as that of Oxford or Cambridge, it is true; for 
no money can make another Addison's Walk out of 
Prairie Avenue, or convert the Mississippi by St. 
Anthony's Falls into new "Backs." 

" We may build ourselves more gorgeous habitations, 
Fill our rooms with painting and with sculpture, 
We cannot buy with gold the old associations ." 

But an atmosphere may be created wholly scholastic, 
and well calculated to excite emulation and inspire 
the ambition of youths. 



English and American Education 169 

Nor is it by any means certain that the American 
people would desire to create the atmosphere of an old- 
world university if they could. The atmosphere of 
Oxford produces, as none other could, certain qualities; 
but are they the qualities which, if England were 
starting to make her universities anew, she would set 
in the forefront of her endeavour ? ' Are they really 
the qualities most desirable even in an Englishman to- 
day ? Are they approximately the qualities most likely 
to equip a man to play the noblest part in the life of 
modern America? The majority of American educa- 
tors would answer unhesitatingly in the negative. 
There are things attaching to Oxford and Cambridge 
which they would dearly love to be able to transplant 
to their own country, but which, they recognise, noth- 
ing but the passage of the centuries can give. Those 
things are unattainable ; and, frankly, if they could 
only be attained by transplanting with them many 
other attributes of English university life, they would 
rather forego them altogether. 

What Englishmen most value in their universities is 
not any book-learning which is to be acquired thereat, 
so much as the manners and rules for the conduct of 
life which are supposed to be imparted in a university 

1 To avoid misapprehension, let me say that, as an Oxford 
man, I have all the Oxford prejudices as fully developed as any 
Englishman could wish. Rather a year of Oxford than five of 
Harvard or ten of Minnesota. How much of this is sentiment, 
and worthless, and how much reason, it would be hard to say 
and is immaterial. The personal prepossession need not blind 
one either to the greatness of the work which the other institu- 
tions do, nor to the defensibility of that point of view which 
sets other qualities, in an institution the professed object of 
which is to educate and to fit youths for life, above even those 
possessed by Oxford or Cambridge. 



170 The Twentieth Century American 

course, — manners and rules which are of an essentially 
aristocratic tendency. Without wishing to push a 
point too far, it is worth noting that that aristocratic 
tendency is purely Norman, quite out of harmony with 
the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon. It would never occur 
to an Anglo-Saxon, pure and simple, to make his uni- 
versity anything else than an institution for scholastic 
training, in which every individual should be taught 
as much, and as equally, as possible. The last thing 
that would occur to him would be to make it a weapon 
of aristocracy or an institution for perpetuating class 
distinctions. The aim and effect of the English uni- 
versities in the past has been chiefly to keep the upper 
classes uppermost. 

That there are too many " universities " in America 
no one — least of all an educated American — denies ; 
but with the vast distances and immense population 
of the country there is room for, perhaps, more than 
Matthew Arnold eighteen years ago could have fore- 
seen, and not a few of those establishments which in 
his day he would doubtless have unhesitatingly classed 
among those which could not be taken seriously, have 
more than justified their existence. 

To the superiority of the American public school 
system over the English, considered merely as an in- 
strumentality for the general education of the masses 
of a people, and not for the production of any especially 
privileged or cultivated class, is generally ascribed the 
confessedly higher average of intelligence and capacity 
among (to use a phrase which is ostensibly meaningless 
in America) the lower orders. But the educational 
system of the country has been by no means the only 
factor in producing this result ; and it may be worth 



English and American Education 171 

while merely as a matter of record, and not without in- 
terest to American readers, to note what some of those 
other factors have been during the last twenty years — 
factors so temporary and so elusive that even now they 
are in danger of being forgotten. 

First among these factors I would set the American 
postal laws, an essential feature of which is the extraor- 
dinarily low rates at which periodical literature may be 
transmitted. A magazine which may be sent to any 
place in the United States for from an eighth of a penny 
to a farthing, according to its weight, will cost for 
postage in England from two-pence-halfpenny to four- 
pence. It is not the mere difference in cost of the 
postage to the subscriber that counts, but the low 
American rate has permitted the adoption by the pub- 
lishers of a system impossible to English magazine- 
makers, a system which has had the effect of making 
magazines, at least as good as the English sixpenny 
monthlies, the staple reading matter of whole classes of 
the population, the classes corresponding to which in 
England never read anything but a local weekly, or 
halfpenny daily, paper. It might be that the reading 
matter of a magazine would not be much superior to 
that of a small weekly paper. But at least it encour- 
ages somewhat more sustained reading and, what is the 
great fact, it accustoms the reader to handling some- 
thing in the form of a book. That is the virtue. A 
people weaned from the broad-sheets by magazines 
readily takes next to book-reading. 

Moreover, under the American plan, books them- 
selves, if issued periodically, used to have the same postal 
advantages as the magazines. 1 A so-called " library" 

1 In 1906, under a stricter definition of the term "periodical, " 



172 The Twentieth Century American 

of the classical English writers could be published 
at the rate of a book a month, call itself a periodical, 
and be sent through the post in precisely the same 
way. The works of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, or 
anybody else could be published in weekly, fortnightly, 
or monthly parts. If in monthly parts at sixpence, the 
cost to the subscriber would be practically the same as 
that of a monthly magazine, only that the reader would 
accumulate at the rate of twelve volumes a year — and 
read at the rate of one a month — the works of Scott, or 
Dickens, or Thackeray. Of course much worthless 
literature, fiction of the trashiest, has been circulated 
in the same way — much more perhaps than of the 
better class. But even so, the reading matter was 
superior to that previously accessible, and the vital 
fact still remains that the people acquired the habit of 
book-reading. 

In America, the part thus played by some of the 
periodical libraries was of much importance, but it was 
probably not comparable to the influence of the ten- 
cent magazine. In the United States itself, the im- 
mense beneficence of that influence has hardly been 
appreciated. The magazines came into vogue, and the 
people accepted the fact as they accept the popularity 
of a new form of " breakfast food." The quickening 
of the national intelligence which resulted was no 
more immediate, no more readily traceable or con- 
spicuous to the public eye, than would be the improve- 
ment in the national stamina which might result from 
the introduction of some new article of diet. A change 



the privilege of sending as second-class matter books issued at 
regular intervals was withdrawn. 



English and American Education 173 

which takes five or ten years to work itself out is lost 
sight of, becomes invisible, amid the jostling activities 
of a national life like the American. Moreover, several 
causes were contributing to the same end and, had any 
one stopped to endeavour to do it, it would not have 
been at any time easj^ to unravel the threads and show 
what proportion of the fabric was woven by each ; but 
if it had been possible to affix an intellect-meter to the 
aggregate brain of the American people during the last 
twenty years, of such ingenious mechanism that it 
would have shown not only what the increase in total 
mental power had been but also what proportions of 
that increase were ascribable to the various contribut- 
ing causes — education, colonial expansion, commercial 
growth, ten-cent magazines, and so forth — and if, 
further, the "readings" of that meter could be inter- 
preted into terms of increase in national energy, 
national productiveness, national success, I do not 
think that Parliament would lose one unnecessary 
day in passing the legislation necessary to reform the 
English postal laws. 

One other point is worth dwelling upon — equally 
trivial in seeming, equally important in its essence — 
which is the selling of books by the great department 
stores, the big general shops, in America. Taking all 
classes of the British population together and both 
sexes— artisans and their wives, peasants in country 
districts, slum residents in London and other large 
cities, — what proportion of the population of the 
British Isles do of set purpose go into a bookseller's 
shop once a year or once in their lives? Is it ten per 
cent. — or five per cent. —or two per cent? The exact 



174 The Twentieth Century American 

proportion is immaterial ; but the number must be very 
small. In America some years ago, the owners of de- 
partment stores and publishers found that there was 
considerable profit to be made in the handling of books 
— cheap reprints of good books in particular. The 
combined booksellers' and stationers' shops in the 
cities of the United States are in themselves more 
frequent and more attractive than in England: and 
I am going back to the days before the drug-store 
library which is as yet too recent an institution to have 
had an easily measurable influence. But incomparably 
more influential than these, in bringing the multitude 
in immediate contact with literature, have been the 
department stores, of almost every one of which the 
" book and stationery " department is a conspicuously 
attractive, and generally most profitable, feature. Here 
every man or woman who goes to do any shopping 
is brought immediately within range of the temptation 
to buy books — is involuntarily seduced into a book- 
shop where the wares are temptingly displayed and 
artfully pressed on the attention of customers. New 
books of all kinds are sold at the best possible dis- 
count; but what was of chief importance was the insti- 
tution of the cheap libraries of the " Classics" — tables 
heaped with them in paper at fourpence, piles of them 
shoulder high in cloth at ninepence, shelves laden 
with them in glittering backs and by no means de- 
spicable in typography at one and sevenpence. Thus 
simultaneously with the inculcation of the book- 
reading habit by the magazines came the facility 
for book-buying, and, always remembering the differ- 
ence in the scale of prices in the two countries, it was 
easy for the woman doing her household shopping to 



English and American Education 175 

fall a victim to the importunities of the sales- 
man and lavish an extra eighteen or thirty-eight 
cents on a copy of The Scarlet Letter or Ivanhoe, 
Irving's Alhambra, or Bleak House, to take home 
as a surprise. In this way, whole classes in Amer- 
ica, the English counterparts of which rarely read 
anything more formidable than a penny paper, ac- 
quired the habit of book-buying and the ambition 
to form a small library. The benefit to the people 
cannot be computed. 

Incidentally, as we know, not a little injustice was 
done to English authors by the pirating of their books, 
without recompense, while the copyright still lived. 
It was after I went to America, though I had heard 
Euskin lecture at Oxford, that I first read Fors Clav- 
igera and Sesame and Lilies in Lovell's Library, at five- 
pence a volume, and, about the same time, Tolstoi's 
War and Peace in the Franklin Square Library, at the 
same price. Of older works, I can still remember 
Lamb and part of De Quincey, Don Quixote and Ras- 
selas (those four for some reason stand out in my mind 
from their fellows in the row), all bought for the modest 
ten-cent piece per volume — the price of two daily 
newspapers (for all newspapers in America then cost 
five cents) or one blacking of one's shoes. Much has, 
of course, been done of late years in England in popu- 
larising the " Classics " in the form of cheap libraries ; 
but the facilities for buying the books — or rather the 
temptations to do so — are incomparably less, while 
the relative prices remain higher. 

Even at fourpence halfpenny (supposing them to 
be purchasable at the price) Lamb's Essays still cost 
more in London than a drink of whiskey. In America, 



176 The Twentieth Century American 

more than twenty years ago, the whiskey cost half as 
much again as the book. 

All of which is in the nature of a digression, but it 
has not led us far from the main road, for the object 
that I am aiming at is to convey to the English reader 
some idea of what the forces are which are at work 
on the education of the American people. The Eng- 
lishman generally knows that in the United States 
there is nothing analogous to the great public schools 
of England — Winchester, Westminster, Eton, and the 
rest — and that they have a host of more or less absurd 
universities in no way to be compared to Oxford or 
Cambridge. The American, as has been said, chal- 
lenges the latter statement bluntly ; while, as for the 
public schools, he maintains that it is not the American 
ideal (if he wished to fortify his position, he might 
say it was not an Anglo-Saxon ideal) to produce a 
limited privileged and cultivated class, but that the 
aim is to educate the whole nation to the highest level; 
that, barring such qualities as their mere selectness 
may enable the great English schools to give to their 
pupils, the national high schools of America do, as a 
matter of fact, prepare pupils just as efficiently for the 
university as do the English institutions, while the 
great system of common schools secures for the mass 
of the people a much better education than is given in 
England to the same classes. Added to which, various 
other causes co-operate with the avowedly educational 
instrumentalities to produce a higher level of intel- 
lectual alertness and a more general love of reading in 
the people. 

And what is the result? Is the American people 
as well educated or as well informed or as well cul- 



English and American Education 177 

tivated as the English ? To endeavour to make a 
comparison between the two is to traverse a very 
morass, full of holes, swamps, sloughs, creeks, inlets, 
quicksands, and pitfalls of divers and terrifying na- 
tures. If it is to be threaded at all, it must be only 
with the greatest caution and, at times, indirectness. 

The charming English writer, the author of Sinners 
and Saints, affected, on alighting from the train in the 
railway station at Chicago, to be immensely surprised 
by the fact that there was not a pig in sight. " I had 
thought," he said, " Chicago was all pigs. " There are 
a good many English still of the same opinion. 

The one institution in any country of which the for- 
eigner sees most, and by which perhaps every people is, 
if unwittingly, most commonly judged by other peoples, 
is its press ; and it is difficult for a superficial observer 
to believe that the nation which produces the news- 
papers of America is either an educated or a cultivated 
nation. Max O'Rell's comment on the American press 
is delightful : " Beyond the date, few statements are 
reliable." Matthew Arnold called the American news- 
papers " an awful symptom " — " the worst features in 
the life of the United States." Americans also — the best 
Americans — have a great dislike of the London papers. 

The fact is that merely as newspapers (as gatherers 
of news) the American papers are probably the best 
in the world. What repels the Englishman is pri- 
marily the form in which the news is dressed — the 
loudness, the sensationalism ; but if he can overcome 
his repugnance to these things sufficiently to be able 
to judge the paper as a whole, he will find, apart from 
the amazing quantity of " news " which it contains, a 



178 The Twentieth Century American 

large amount of literary matter of a high order. I am 
not for one moment claiming that the American paper 
(not the worst and loudest, which are contemptible, 
nor the best, which are almost as non-sensational as 
the best London papers, but the average American 
daily paper) is, or ought to be, as acceptable reading 
to a cultivated man — still less to a refined woman — as 
almost any one of the penny, or some halfpenny, 
London papers. But the point that I would make and 
which I would insist on very earnestly is that the two 
do not stand for the same thing in relation to the 
peoples which they respectively represent 

We have seen the same thing before in comparing 
the consular and diplomatic services of the two coun- 
tries. Just as in the United States the consuls are 
plucked at random from the body of the people, 
whereas in England they are a carefully selected and 
thoroughly trained class by themselves, so the press of 
the United States represents the people in its entirety, 
whereas the English press represents only the edu- 
cated class. The London papers (I am omitting con- 
sideration of certain halfpenny papers) are not talking 
for the people as a whole, nor to the people as a whole. 
Consciously or unconsciously they are addressing 
themselves always to the comparatively small circle 
of the educated class. When they speak of the 
peasant or the working man, even of the tradesman, 
they discuss him as a third person : it is not to him 
that they are talking. They use a language which is 
not his language ; they assume in their reader in- 
formation, sentiments, modes of thought, which belong 
not to him, but only to the educated class — that class 
which, whether each individual thereof has been to a 



English and American Education 179 

public school and a university or not, is saturated with 
the public school and university traditions. 

It was said before that the English people has a dis- 
position to be guided by the voice of authority — to 
follow its leaders — as the American people has not. 
The English newspaper speaks to the educated class, 
trusting, not always with justification, that opinion 
once formulated in that class will be communicated 
downwards and accepted by the people. The American 
newspaper endeavours to speak to the people direct. 

That English papers are immensely more democratic 
than once they were goes without saying. A man 
need not be much past middle age to be able to re- 
member when the Daily Telegraph created, by appeal- 
ing to, a whole new stratum of newspaper readers. 
The same thing has been done again more recently by 
the halfpenny papers, some of which come approxi- 
mately near to being adapted to the intelligences, and 
representing the tastes, of the whole population, or at 
least the urban population, down to the lowest grade. 
But it is not by those papers that England would like 
to be judged. Yet when Englishmen draw inferences 
about the American people from the papers which they 
see, they are doing what is intrinsically as unjust. It 
would be no less unjust to take the first hundred men 
that one met with, on Broadway or State Street, and 
compare them— their intellectuality and culture — with 
one hundred members of the London university clubs. 

Let us also remember here what was said of the 
Anglo-Saxon spirit — that spirit which is so essentially 
non-aristocratic, holding all men equal in their inde- 
pendence. We have seen how this spirit is more 
untrammelled and works faster in the United States 



180 The Twentieth Century American 

than in England; but where, in any case, it has moved 
ahead among Americans the tendency in England 
generally is to follow in the same lines, not in imita- 
tion of America but by the impulse of the common 
genius of the peoples. 

The American dailies, even the leading dailies, are 
made practically for those hundred men on Broadway ; 
the London penny papers are addressed in the main to 
the university class. Judging from the present trend 
of events in England it may not be altogether chimeri- 
cal to imagine a time when in London only two or 
three papers will hold to the class tradition and will 
still speak exclusively in the language of the upper 
classes (as a small number of papers in New York 
do to-day), while the great body of the English press 
will have followed the course of the American pub- 
lishers ; and when the English papers are frankly 
adapted to the tastes and intelligence of as large a 
proportion of the English people as are now catered 
for by the majority of the American papers, he would 
be a rash Englishman whose patriotism would per- 
suade him to prophesy that the London papers would 
be any more scholarly, more refined, or more chastened 
in tone than are the papers of New York or Chicago. 

And while the Englishman is generally ready to 
draw unfavourable inferences from the undeniably un- 
pleasant features of the majority of American daily 
papers, he seldom stops to draw analogous inferences 
from a comparison of the American and English 
monthly magazines. Great Britain produces no 
magazines to compare with Harper's, The Century, or 
Seribner's. Those three magazines combined have, 
I believe, a number of readers in the United States 



English and American Education 181 

equalling the aggregate circulation of the London penny 
dailies; which is a point that is worth consideration. 
When, moreover, the cheaper magazines became a pos- 
sibility, how came it that such publications as Mc- 
Clure's and The Cosmopolitan arose? The illustrated 
magazines of the United States are indeed a fact of 
profound significance, for which the Englishman when 
he measures the taste and intellectuality of the Ameri- 
can people by its press makes no allowance. Magazines 
of the same excellence cannot find the same support in 
England. At least two earnest attempts have been 
made in late years to establish English monthlies 
which would compare with any of the three first men- 
tioned above, and both attempts have failed. 

What has been said about the much more represent- 
ative character of the American daily press— the fact 
that the same papers are read by a vastly larger pro- 
portion of the population — brings us face to face with 
a root-fact which vitiates almost any attempt at a rough 
and ready comparison between the peoples. In America, 
there exist the counterparts of every class of man who 
is to be found in England — men as refined, men no 
less crass and brutal— some as vulgar and some as full 
of the pride of birth. Most Englishmen will be sur- 
prised to hear that the American, democrat though he 
is, is as a rale more proud of an ancestor who fought in 
the Revolutionary War than is an Englishman of one 
who fought in the Wars of the Roses. I am sure that 
he sets more store by a direct and authentic descent 
from one of the company of the Mayflower than the 
Englishman does by an equally direct and authentic 
line back to the days of William the Conqueror. In- 
cidentally it may be said that the American will talk 



1 82 The Twentieth Century American 

more about it. But while in America all classes exist, 
they are not fenced apart, as in England, in fact any 
more than they are in theory. The American people 
{pace the leaders of the New York Four Hundred) 
" comes mixed " ; dip in where you will and you bring 
up all sorts of fish. In England if you go into edu- 
cated society, you are likely to meet almost exclusively 
educated people — or at least people with the stamp of 
educated manners. Sir Gorgius Midas is not of course 
inexorably barred from the society of duchesses. 
Her Grace of Pentonville must have met him fre- 
quently. But in America the duchesses have to rub 
shoulders with him every day. And— which is worth 
noting— their husbands also rub shoulders with his 
wife. 

"Which brings us to the second root-fact, which is al- 
most as disturbing and confounding to casual observa- 
tion as the first, namely, the much larger part in the 
intellectual life of the country played by women in 
America. Intellectuality or culture in its narrower 
sense— meaning a familiarity with art and letters — is 
not commonly regarded by Englishmen as an essential 
possession in a wife. The lack of it is certainly not 
considered by the American woman a cardinal offence 
in a husband. I know many American men who, on 
being consulted on any matter of literary or artistic 
taste, say at once : " I don't know. I leave all that 
to my wife." 

An Englishman in an English house, looking at the 
family portraits, may ask his hostess who painted a 
certain picture. 

" I don't know," she will say, " I must ask my hus- 



English and American Education 183 

band. Will, who is the portrait of your grandfather 
by — the one over there in his robes ? " 

"Raeburn," says Will. 

"Of course," says the wife. "I never can remem- 
ber the artists' names ; they are so confusing — espe- 
cially the English ones." 

The Englishman thinks no worse of her ; but the 
American woman, listening, wishes that she had a 
portrait of her husband's grandfather by Raeburn and 
opines that she would know the artist's name. 

The same Englishman goes to America and, being 
entertained, asks a similar question of his host. 

"I don't know," says the man, "I must ask my 
wife. Mary, who painted that picture over there — 
the big tree and the blue sky ? " 

" Rousseau," says Mary. 

"Of course," says the husband. "I never can 
remember the names of these fellows. They mix me 
all up — especially the French ones." 

And the Englishman returning home tells his friends 
of the queer fellow with whom he dined over there — 
"an awfully good chap, you know" — who owned all 
sorts of jolly paintings — Rousseaux and things — and 
did not even know the names of the artists: " Had to 
ask his wife, by Jove ! " 

It is not for one moment claimed that there are not 
in England many women fully as cultured as the most 
cultured and fairest Americans; that there are not many 
Englishwomen much better informed, much more 
widely read, than their husbands. The phenomenon, 
however, is not nearly as common as in America, 
where, it has already been suggested, it is probably 
the result of the fact that the women have at the out- 



1 84 The Twentieth Century American 

set received precisely the same education as the men 
and, since leaving school or college, have had more 
leisure, being less engrossed in business and material 
things. 

But this feminine predominance in matters of assthet- 
ics in the United States does not as a rule increase the 
Englishman's opinion of the intellectuality or culture 
of the people as a whole. He still judges only by the 
men. Indeed, he is not entirely disposed to like 
so much intellectuality in women — such interest in 
politics, educational matters, art, and literature. Not 
having been accustomed to it he rather disapproves of 
it. Blue regimentals are only fit for the blue horse 
or the artillery. 

The Englishman in an American house meets a 
man more rough and less polished than a man holding 
a similar position in society would be in England ; and 
he thinks poorly of American society in consequence. 
He also meets that man's wife, who shows a familiarity 
with art, letters, and public affairs vastly more com- 
prehensive than he would expect to find in a woman 
of similar position in England. But he does not 
therefore strike a balance and re-cast his estimate of 
American society, any more than in his estimate of 
the American press he makes allowance for the Amer- 
ican magazines. He only thinks that the woman's 
knowledge is rather out of place and conjectures it to 
be probably superficial. Wherein he is no less one- 
sided in his prejudice than the American who will 
not believe in English humour because he cannot 
understand it. 

Philistinism is undoubtedly more on the surface 
in educated society in the United States than in Great 



English and American Education 185 

Britain ; but in England outside that society it is nearly 
all Philistinism. Step down from a social class in 
England, and you come to a new and lower level of 
refinement and information. In America the people 
still "come mixed." 

Twenty-five years ago in England, you did not 
expect a stock-broker, and to-day you do not expect a 
haberdasher (even though he may have been knighted), 
to know whether Botticelli is a wine or a cheese. In 
America, because the Englishman meets that stock- 
broker or that haberdasher in a society in which he 
would not be likely to meet him in England, he does 
expect him to know ; and I suspect that if a census were 
taken there would be found more stock-brokers and 
haberdashers in America than in England who do know 
something of Botticelli. I am quite certain that more 
of their wives do. Matthew Arnold spoke not too 
pleasantly of the curious sensation that he experienced 
in addressing a bookseller in America as " General." 
The "bookseller" in question was a man widely re- 
spected in the United States, the head of a great house 
of publishers and booksellers, a conspicuously public- 
spirited citizen, and a bona fide General who saw stern 
service in the Civil War. To Englishmen, knowing 
nothing of the background, the mere fact as stated by 
Matthew Arnold is curious. 

But if civil war were to break out in Great Britain 
— England and Wales against Scotland and Ireland — 
and the conflict assumed such titanic proportions that 
single armies of a million men took the field, then 
would Tennyson's " smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue " 
indeed have to " leap from his counter and till and 
strike, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home." 



1 86 The Twentieth Century American 

The entire population of England that was not actually 
needed at home would be compelled to take the field, 
and in the slaughter (it is curious how little English 
men know of the terrific proportions of the conflict 
between the North and South) the demand for officers 
would be so great that there would not be enough men 
of previous training to fill the places. Men would rise 
from the ranks by merit and among those who rose to 
be generals there might well be a publisher or book- 
seller or two. On the termination of the war, the 
soldiers would turn from their soldiering to their old 
trades and it might be General Murray or General 
Macmillan or General Bumpus ; and the thing would 
not then be strange to English ears. 

An A merican story tells how, soon after the close of 
the Civil War, a stranger asked a farmer if he needed 
any labourers ; and the farmer replied in the negative. 
He had just taken on three new ones, he said, all of 
them disbanded soldiers. One, he added, had been a 
private, one a captain, and one a full-blown colonel. 

" And how do you find them ? " asked the other. 

" The private 's a first-class workman," said the 
farmer, " and the captain he is n't bad." 

"And the colonel?" 

" Well, I don't want to say nothing agin a man as fit 
as a colonel in the war," said the farmer, " but I know 
I ain't hiring no brigadier-generals if they come this 
way." 

They are growing old now, and fewer, the men who 
held commissions in the war that ended over forty 
years ago ; but during those forty years there has been 
no community, no trade or profession or calling, in 
which they have not been to be found, indistinguish- 



English and American Education 187 

able from their civilian colleagues, except by the tiny 
button in the lapels of their coats. Until Mr. Eoose- 
velt, (and he won his spurs in another war) there has 
been no man elected President of the United States, 
except Mr. Cleveland, the one Democrat, who had not 
a distinguished record as an officer in the Union armies 
— Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley 
were all soldiers. You may still see that little but- 
ton in many pulpits. Farmers wear it, and cabinet 
ministers, millionaires, and mechanics. 

The Anglo-Saxon is a fighting breed. The popu- 
lation of the British Isles sprang from the loins of 
successive waves of fighting men. It was not the 
weaklings of the Danes or Normans, Jutes, Saxons, or 
Angles who came to conquer Britain, but the bold, the 
hardy, the venturesome of each tribe or people. It was 
not the mere mixture of bloods that made the English 
character what it was, the race a race of empire build- 
ers ; it was because of each blood there came to Britain 
only of the most adventurous. And through the cent- 
uries it has been the constant stress and training of 
the perpetual turmoil in which the people have lived 
that have kept the stock from degeneration. There 
has never been a time in English history, save when 
the people have been struggling in wars among them- 
selves, when there has been an English family that has 
not at any given moment had sons or fathers, uncles 
or cousins out somewhere doing the work of the 
Empire. 

And some are drowned in deep water, 

And some in sight of shore, 
And word goes back to the weary wife 

And ever she sends more. 



88 The Twentieth Century American 

For since that wife had gate or gear 

And hearth and garth and bield 
She willed her sons to the white Harvest, 

And that is a bitter yield. 



The good wife's sons come home again 

With little into their hands, 
But the lore o' men that ha' dealt wi' men 
In the new and naked lands, 

But the faith o' men that ha' brothered men 

By more than the easy breath, 
And the eyes o' men that ha' read wi' men 

In the open book of death. 1 

I have already explained how far Americans are 
from understanding the British Empire. It is a pity ; 
they would understand Englishmen better and like 
them better. And what the building of the Empire 
and the keeping of it have done for Englishmen, the 
Civil War did in large measure for the Americans. 
Even the struggle with their own wilderness might not 
have sufficed to keep the people hard and sound of 
heart and limb through a century of peace and growing 
prosperity. The Civil War is already beginning to 
slip into the farther reaches of the people's memory ; 
but twenty-five years ago the echoes of the guns had 
hardly died away — the minds of the people were still 
inspired. It was an awful, and a splendid, experience 
for the nation. It is not necessary, with Emerson, 
" always to respect war hereafter " ; but there have 
been times when it has seemed to me that I would 
rather be able to wear that little tri-colour button 

1 Rudyard Kipling, " The Sea Wife" (77ie Seven Seas). 



English and American Education 189 

of the American Loyal Legion than any other decora- 
tion in the world. 1 

It is the great compensation of war that it does not 
breed in a people only a fighting spirit. All history 
shows that it is in the mental exhilaration and the 
moral uplift after a period of war successfully waged 
that a people puts forth the best that is in it, in the 
production of works of art and in its literature. It is 
an old legend — older than Omar — that the most beau- 
tiful flowers spring from the blood of heroes. And 
it is true. When the genius of a nation has been 
ploughed up with cannon-shot and bayonets and 
watered with blood — then it is that it breaks into 
the most nearly perfect blossom. It has been so 
through all history, back beyond the times of gun and 
bayonet, when spears and swords were the plough- 
shares, as far as we can see and doubtless farther. In 
America, the necessities of the case compelled the 
people to turn first to material works ; it was to the 
civilising of their continent, the repairing of their shat- 
tered commercial and industrial structure (shattered 
when it was yet only half built), that their new in- 
spiration had perforce to turn first. But there was 
impetus enough for that and to spare, and, after sat- 
isfying their mere physical needs, they swept on with 
a sort of inspired hunger for things to satisfy their 
minds and souls. Europeans are accustomed to think 
that the American desire for culture is something 
superficial — something put on for appearance's sake; 
and nothing could well be farther from the truth. It 

1 The Loyal Legion is the society of those who held commis- 
sions as officers on the side of the North. The Grand Army of 
the Republic is the society which includes all ranks. 



190 The Twentieth Century American 

is an intense, deep-seated, national craving. War on 
the scale of the Civil War ploughs deep. It may be 
impossible for a nation to make itself cultivated — 
to grow century-old shrubberies and five-century-old 
turf — in ten years or forty ; and when the Americans 
in their ravening famine reach out to grasp at once all 
that is good and beautiful in the world, it may be that 
at first they cannot assimilate all that they draw to 
them — they can grasp, but not absorb. To that extent 
there may be much that is superficial in American 
culture. But every year and every day they are 
sucking the nourishment deeper — the influences are 
penetrating, percolating, permeating the soil of their 
natures (yes, I know that I am running two metaphors 
abreast, but let them run) — and it is a mistake to con- 
clude because in some places the culture lies only on 
the surface that there are not others where it has 
already sunk through and through. Above all is it a 
mistake to suppose that the emotion itself is shallow 
or that the yearning is not as deep as their — or any 
human — natures. 

It is possible that some critics may be found cavil- 
ling enough to accuse me of inconsistency in thus 
celebrating the praise of War in a work which is 
avowedly intended for the promotion of Peace. Car- 
lyle wisely, if somewhat brutally, pointed out that if 
an Oliver Cromwell be assassinated " it is certain you 
may get a cart-load of turnips from his carcase." But 
one does not therefore advocate regicide for the sake 
of the kitchen-gardens. 



CHAPTER VIII 
A Comparison in Culture 

The Advantage of Youth — Japanese Eclecticism and Amer- 
ican — The Craving for the Best — Cyrano de Bergerac — Verest- 
schagin — Music and the Drama — Culture by Paroxysms — Mr. 
Gladstone and the Japanese — Anglo-Saxon Crichtons — Amer- 
icans as Linguists — England's Past and America's Future — 
Americanisms in Speech — Why they are Disappearing in 
America — And Appearing in England — The Press and the 
Copyright Laws — A Look into the Future. 

Ruskin, speaking of the United States, said that he 
could never bring himself to live in a country so 
unfortunate as to possess no castles. But, with its 
obvious disadvantages, youth in a nation has also com- 
pensations. Max O'Rell says that to be American 
is to be both fresh and mature, and I have certainly 
known many Americans who were fresh. The shoul- 
ders are too young for the head to be very old. But 
when a man — let us say an Englishman of sixty — full 
of worldly wisdom, having travelled much and seen 
many men and cities, looks on a young man, just out 
of the university, perhaps, very keen on his profession, 
very certain of making his way in the world, with a 
hundred interests in what seem to the other " new- 
fangled " things — telephones and typewriters and 
bicycles and radio-activity and motor cars, things 
unknown to the old man's youth, — talking of philo- 

191 



192 The Twentieth Century American 

sophies and theories and principles which were not 
taught at college when the other was an under- 
graduate, the elder is likely to think that the young- 
man's judgment is sadly crude and raw, that his edu- 
cation has been altogether too diffused and made up 
of smatterings of too many things, and to say to him- 
self that the old sound, simple ways were better. Yet 
it may be — is it not almost certain? — that the youth 
has had the training which will give him a wider 
outlook than his father ever had, and will make him 
a broader man. 

In our grandfathers' days, a man of reasonable culture 
could come approximately near to knowing all that 
then was known and worth the knowing. The wisdom 
and science of the world could be included in the 
compass of a modest bookshelf. But the province of 
human knowledge has become so wide that, however 
much "general information " a man may have, he can 
truly know nothing unless he studies it as a specialist. 
It is, perhaps, largely as a reaction against the Jack- 
sonian theory of universal competence that the avowed 
ideal of American education to-day is to cultivate the 
student's power of concentration — to give him a sur- 
vey, elementary but sound, of as wide a field as pos- 
sible, but above all to teach him so to use his mind 
that to whatever corner of that field he may turn for 
his walk in life, he will be able to focus all his intellect 
upon it — to concentrate and bring to bear all his ener- 
gies on whatever tussock or mole-hill it may be out of 
which he has to dig his fortune. "When the youth 
steps out into life, it may be that his actual store of 
knowledge is superficial — a smattering of too many 
things — but superficiality is precisely the one quality 



A Comparison in Culture 193 

which, in theory at least, his training has been cal- 
culated not to produce. Englishmen know that the 
American throws tremendous energy and earnestness 
into his business. They know that he throws the 
same earnestness into his sports. Is it not reasonable 
to suppose that he will be no less earnest in the study 
of Botticelli ? And it is a great advantage (which the 
American nation shares with the American youth) to 
have the products, the literature, the art, the in- 
stitutions of the whole world to choose from, with 
practically no traditions to hamper the choice. 

When the Japanese determined to adopt Western 
ways, seeing that so only could they hold their own 
against the peoples of the West, they did not model 
their civilisation on that of any one European country. 
They sent the most intelligent of their young men 
abroad into every country, each with a mission to 
study certain things in that country ; and so, gath- 
ering for comparison the ways of thought and the 
institutions of all peoples, they were able to pick and 
choose from each what seemed best to them and to re- 
ject all else. They did not propose to make them- 
selves a nation of imitation Englishmen or Germans or 
Americans. " But," we can imagine them saying, " if 
we take whatever is best in each country we ought 
surely to be able to make ourselves into a nation better 
than any." They modelled their navy on the British, 
but not their army, nor their banking system, nor did 
they copy much from British commercial or industrial 
methods — nor did they take the British system of 
education. 

The United States has been less free to choose. 
The Japanese had a new house, quite empty, and they 



194 The Twentieth Century American 

could do their furnishing all at once The American 
nation, though young, has, after all, a century of 
domestic life behind it, in the course of which it has 
accumulated a certain amount of furniture in the 
form of institutions, prejudices, and traditions, some of 
which are fixtures and could not be torn out of the 
structure if the nation wished it ; others, though mov- 
able, possess associations for the sake of which it would 
not part with them if it could. Fortunately, however, 
the house has been much built on to of late years and 
what goods, or bads, are already amassed can all be 
stowed away in a single east wing. All the main 
building (the eastern wing used to be the main build- 
ing, but it is not now), and particularly the western 
end and the annex to the north, are new and empty, 
to be decorated and furnished as the owner pleases. 
And while the owner, like a sensible man, intends to 
do all that he can to encourage home manufactures, 
he does not hesitate to go as far afield as he likes to 
fill a nook with something better than anything that 
can be turned out at home. 

Nothing strikes an Englishman more, after he comes 
to know the people, than this eclectic habit, paradoxi- 
cally combined as it is with an intense — an over-noisy 
— patriotism. "The best," the American is fond of 
saying, " is good enough for me " ; and it never occurs 
to him that he has not entire right to the best where- 
ever he may find it. In England it is only a small 
part of the population which considers itself entitled 
to the best of anything. The rest of the people may 
covet, but the best belongs to "their betters." The 
American knows no "betters." He comes to England 
and walks, as of right, into the best hotels, the best 



A Comparison in Culture 195 

restaurants, the best seats at the theatres — and the best 
society. He buys, so far as his purse permits, and often 
his purse permits a great deal, the best works of art. 
The consequence is that the world brings him of its 
best. It may defraud him once in a while into buying 
an imitation or a second-class article patched up ; but, 
on the whole, the American people has something like 
the best of the world to choose from. And what is 
true of the palpable and material things is equally true 
of the intangible and intellectual. 

Englishmen have long been familiar with one aspect 
of this fact, in the honours which America has in the 
past been ready to shower on any visiting Englishman 
of distinction : in the extraordinary number of dollars 
that she has been willing to pay to hear him lecture. 
Of this particular commodity — the lecturing English- 
man — the people has been fairly sated ; but because 
Americans are no longer eager to lionise any English 
author or artist with some measure of a London re- 
putation, it does not by any means imply that they are 
not still seeking for, and grappling, the best in art 
and letters wherever they can find it. They only doubt 
whether the Englishman who comes to lecture is, after 
all, the best. 

A Frenchman has pronounced American society to 
be the wittiest in the world. A German has said that 
more people read Dante in Boston than in Berlin. I 
take it that many more read Shakespeare in the United 
States than in Great Britain — and thej r certainly try 
harder to understand him. Nor need it be denied 
that they have to try harder. Without any knowledge 
of actual sales, I have no doubt that the number of 
copies of the works of any continental European 



19 6 The Twentieth Century American 

author, of anything like a first-class reputation, sold in 
America is vastly greater than the number sold in 
England. Tolstoi, Turgeniev, Sienkiewicz, Ibsen, 
Maeterlinck, Fogazzaro, Jokai, Haeckel, Nietzsche — 
I give the names at random as they come — of any one 
of these there is immeasurably more of a " cult " in 
the United States than in England — a far larger propor- 
tion of the population makes some effort to master 
what is worth mastering in each. Rodin's works — his 
name at least and photographs of his masterpieces — 
are familiar to tens of thousands of Americans belong- 
ing to classes which in England never heard of him. 
Helleu's drawings were almost a commonplace of 
American illustrated literature six years before one 
educated Englishman in a hundred knew his name. 
Zorn's etchings are almost as well known in the United 
States as Whistler's. Englishmen remain curiously 
engrossed in English things. 

It may be a very disputable judgment to say that 
the most nearly Shakespearian literary production of 
modern times — at least of those which have gained 
any measure of fame — is M. Rostand's Cyrano de 
Bergerac. Immediately on its publication it was 
greeted in America with hardly less enthusiasm than 
in Paris ; and within a few weeks it became the chief 
topic of conversation at a thousand dinner tables. 
In a few months I had seen the play acted by 
three different companies — all admirable, scholarly 
productions, of which the most famous and most "au- 
thorised " was by no means the best — and soon there- 
after I came to England, for a short visit, but with the 
determination to find time to make the trip to Paris to 
see M. Coquelin as "Cyrano." I found Englishmen — 



A Comparison in Culture 197 

educated Englishmen, including not a few authors and 
critics to whom I spoke — practically unaware of the 
existence of such a play. Of those who had heard of 
it and read critiques, I met not one who had read the 
work itself. Some time after, Sir Charles Wyndham 
produced it in London and it was, I believe, not a suc- 
cess. To-day Cyrano de Bergerac (I am speaking of it 
not as an acting play but as literature) is practically 
unknown even to educated Englishmen, except such 
as make French literature their special study. 

Cyrano may or may not be on a level with any but 
the greatest of Shakespeare's plays (it is evident from 
his other work that M. Rostand is not a Shakespeare) 
but that it was an immeasurably finer thing than 
ninety-nine per cent, of the books of the year which 
English people were reading that winter on the ad- 
vice of English critics is beyond question. The nation 
which was reading and discussing M. Rostand's work 
was conspicuously better engaged than the nation 
which was reading and discussing the English novels 
of the season. 

Again when poor Vasili Verestschagin met his 
death so tragically off Port Arthur, his name meant 
little or nothing to the great majority of educated 
Englishmen, though there had been exhibitions of his 
work in London — the same exhibitions as were .made 
throughout the larger cities of the United States. In 
America regret for him was wide-spread and personal, 
for he stood for something definite in American eyes — 
rather unfortunately, perhaps, in one way, because 
Verestschagin, too, had painted those miserable sepoys 
being eternally blown from British guns. 

The general English misapprehension of the present 



198 The Twentieth Century American 

condition of art and literature in America sometimes 
shows itself in unexpected places. I have a great love 
for Punch. Since the time when the beautifying of its 
front cover with gamboge and vermilion and emerald 
green constituted the chief solace of wet days in the 
nursery, I doubt if, in the course of forty years, I have 
missed reading one dozen copies of the London Chari- 
vari. After a period of exile in regions where current 
literature is unobtainable one of the chief delights 
of a return to civilisation is "catching up" with the 
back numbers of Punch; nor, in spite of gibes to the 
contrary, has the paper ever been more brilliant than 
under its present editorship. Yet Punch in this pre- 
sent week of September 11, 1907, represents an Ameri- 
can woman, apparently an American woman of wealth 
and position (at all events she is at the time touring in 
Italy), as saying on hearing an air from 11 Trovatore: 
" Say, these Italians ain't vurry original. Guess I 've 
heard that tune on our street organs in New York ever 
since I was a gurl." 

The weaknesses of the peoples of other nations are 
fair game; but it is the essence of just caricature that 
it should have some verisimilitude. Punch could not 
publish that drawing with the accompanying legend 
unless it was the belief of the editor or the staff that 
such a solecism was more or less likely to proceed from 
the mouth of such an American as is depicted; which 
is precisely the error of the Frenchman who believes 
that Englishmen sell their wives at Smithfield. Thirty 
years ago, the lampoon would have had some justifica- 
tion; but at the present time both the actual number 
and the percentage of women who are familiar with the 
Italian operas is, I believe, vastly greater in America 



A Comparison in Culture 199 

than in England. This statement will undoubtedly be 
received with incredulity by the majority of English- 
men who know nothing about the United States ; but 
no one who does know the people of the country will 
dispute it. In England, the opera is still, for all the 
changes that have occurred in the last quarter of a 
century, largely a pleasure of a limited class. It may 
be (and personally I believe) that in that class there is 
a larger number of true musicians who know the 
operas well and love them appreciatively than is to be 
found in the United States ; but the number of people 
who have a reasonable acquaintance with the majority 
of operas, and are familiar with the best known airs 
from each and with the general characteristics of the 
various composers, is immensely larger in America. 
It is only the same fact that we have confronted so 
often before — the fact of the greater homogeneousness 
or uniformity of tastes and pursuits in the American 
people. 

It must be clearly understood, here as elsewhere, 
that I am not comparing merely the people of New 
York with the people of London, but the people 
of the whole United States of all classes, urban and 
provincial, industrial and peasant, East and West, with 
the whole population of all classes in the British Isles ; 
for a large percentage of the mistakes which English- 
men make aboat America arises from the fact that 
they insist on comparing the educated classes of Lon- 
don with such people as they may chance to have met 
in New York or one or two Eastern cities, under the 
impression that they are thereby drawing a comparison 
between the two peoples. Senator Hoar's opinion of 
Matthew Arnold has been already quoted; and the 



200 The Twentieth Century American 

truth is that very few Englishmen who have written 
about America have lived in the country long enough 
to grasp how much of the United States lies on the 
other side of the North River. Not only does not New 
York alone, but New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and 
"Washington combined do not bear anything like the 
same relation to America as a whole as London bears 
to the British Isles. Englishmen take no account of, 
for they have not seen and no one has reported to 
them, the intense craving tor and striving after culture 
and self-improvement which exists (and has existed 
for a generation) not only in such larger cities as 
Chicago, Cincinnati, St Louis, Milwaukee, and New 
Orleans, but in many hundreds of smaller communities 
scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific One must 
have such a vision of the United States as a whole as 
will enable him to imagine all this endeavour, now dis- 
sipated over so vast a stretch of country, as all massed 
together into a territory no larger than the British Isles 
before he can arrive at an intelligent basis of comparison 
between the peoples. What is centralised in England, 
in America is diffused over half a continent and much 
less easily measurable. 

It happens that as I am correcting the proofs of this 
chapter the London newspapers of the day (January 
26, 1908) contain announcements of the death in New 
York of Edward MacDowell. He was of: 0:1 sooken of 
as " the American Grieg " : but it was a phrase which 
irritated many good musical critics in America, for 
the reason that they considered their countryman the 
greater man of the two. They would have had Grieg 
spoken of as the Norwegian MacDowell. In : 
judgment they may have been right or they may have 



A Comparison in Culture 201 

been wrong ; but it is characteristic of the attitudes of 
the British and American peoples that, whereas the 
people of the United States know Grieg better than he 
is known in England (that is to say, that a larger pro- 
portion of the people, outside the classes which pro- 
fessedly account themselves musical, have more or less 
acquaintance with his music), just as they know the 
work of half a dozen English composers, MacDowell, 
though he had played his pianoforte concertos in 
London, remained almost unknown in England out- 
side of strictly musical circles. It is certain that had 
MacDowell been an Englishman he would have been 
immensely better known in America than, being an 
American, he ever was in England. 

In the kindred field of the drama the general English 
idea of the American stage is based chiefly on acquaint- 
ance with that noisy type of " musical comedy " of 
which so many specimens have in recent years been 
brought to England from the other side of the Atlantic. 
It is as if Americans judged English literature by 
Miss Marie Corelli and Guy Thorne. Those things are 
brought to England because they are opined by the 
managers to be the sort of thing that England wants or 
which is likely to succeed in England, not because they 
are what America considers her best product. To at- 
tempt any comparison of the living playwrights or 
actors in the two countries would be a thorny and 
perilous undertaking ; and if any comparison is to be 
made at all it must be done lightly and as far as possi- 
ble examples must be drawn from those who are no 
longer actively on the boards. Madame de Navarro 
(Miss Mary Anderson) has deliberately put on record 
her opinion of Miss Clara Morris as " the greatest 



202 The Twentieth Century American 

emotional actress I ever saw." It is not likely that 
when Madame de Navarro pronounced that estimate 
she was forgetting either Miss Terry or Mrs. Campbell 
—or Mesdames Rejane and Bernhardt or Signora Duse. 
Madame de Navarro is no mean judge : and those 
who have read Miss Morris's wonderful book, Life 
on the Stage, will think the judgment in this case not 
incredible. 

Similarly I believe that in Mr. Richard Mansfield the 
United States has just lost an actor who had not his 
peer in earnestness, scholarship, restraint, and power on 
the English stage. I am not acquainted with an Eng- 
lish actor to-day who, in the combination of all these 
qualities, is in his class. His " Peer Gynt " was a thing 
which, I believe, no living English actor could have 
approached, and I gravely doubt whether England 
would have furnished a public who would have appre- 
ciated it in sufficient numbers to make its presentation 
a success if it had been achieved in London. 

It was said that in any effort to arrive at an estimate 
of American culture, or to state that culture in terms of 
English culture, we should have to find landmarks in 
trifles. All these things are such trifles. Let us con- 
cede that Cyrano is not the greatest literature, nor is 
Verestschagin's work the highest art; still neither the 
one nor the other is properly a negligible quantity in 
the sum-total of the creative work of the generation. 
There may be many American women who do not 
know their Yerdi, and it may be that Madame de 
Navarro's estimate of Miss Morris, mine of Mr. Mans- 
field, and that of certain American critics of Edward 
MacDowell are equally at fault; but it still remains 
absurd to take ignorance of the Italian operas as charac- 



A Comparison in Culture 203 

teristic of American women or to talk contemptuously, 
as many Englishmen do, of the American theatre, 
because they have no knowledge of it beyond what 
they have seen of the one class of production from 
Tlte Belle of New York to The Prince of Pilsen, or of 
American music, because their acquaintance with it 
begins and ends with Sousa and the writers of " coon 
songs." 

It will be urged that successive " crazes " for in- 
dividual artists or authors, for particular productions or 
even isolated schools, are no evidence of any general 
culture. Conceding this, it remains impossible to 
avoid the question: supposing a nation or an individual 
to spend each successive six months in a new enthu- 
siasm — six months on Plato and Aristotelianism, — six 
months, taking the Light of Asia, Mr. Sinnett, and 
Kim as a starting point, on Buddhism and esoteric 
philosophy, — six months, inspired by Fitzgerald, on 
Omar, Persian literature and history and the various 
ramifications thereof, — six months on M. Rodin, his 
relation to the art of sculpture in general and particu- 
larly to the sculpture of the Greeks, — a similar six 
months devoted to Mr. Watt with like excursions into 
his environment, proximate and remote, — six months 
to Millet, Barbizon, and the history of French painting, 
— six months of Russian art with Verestschagin and 
six with Russian literature and politics working out- 
wards from Count Tolstoi, — six months of philosophic 
speculation radiating from Haeckel, — six months 
absorbed in Japanese art, — six months burrowing in 
Egyptian excavations and Egyptian history — the ques- 
tion is, I say, supposing a nation or an individual to 



204 The Twentieth Century American 

have passed through twenty such spasms (of which I 
have suggested ten, every one of which ten is a sub- 
ject which I have in my own experience known to be- 
come the rage in America more or less wide-spread and 
for a greater or lesser period) and supposing that nation 
or that individual to be possessed of extraordinary 
earnestness and power of concentration, with a great 
desire to learn, how far will that nation or that in- 
dividual have travelled on the road toward something 
approaching culture ? Let it be granted that the indi- 
vidual or the nation starts with something less of the 
aesthetic temperament, less well grounded in, or dis- 
posed towards, artistic or literary study than the 
average Englishman who has made decent use of his 
opportunities at school, at the university, and in the 
surroundings of his every-day life; the intellectual 
condition of that individual or nation will not at the 
end of the ten years of successive furores be the same 
intellectual condition as that of the Englishman who, 
after leaving college, has spent ten years in the ordin- 
ary educated society of England, but it is probable 
that, besides the accumulation of a great quantity of 
information, some not entirely inadequate or incorrect 
general standards of taste and criticism will have been 
arrived at. It is worth remembering that at least one 
eminently competent English critic has declared that 
while there may be less erudition in America, there is 
conspicuously more culture. 

When the Englishman hears the American, and 
especially the American woman, slip so glibly from 
Rodin to Rameses, from Kant to kakemonos, he dubs 
her superficial. Perhaps she is, considering only the 
actual knowledge possessed compared with the poten- 



A Comparison in Culture 205 

tiality of knowledge on any one of the topics. There 
is a story which has been fitted to many persons and 
many occasions, but which thirty years ago was told of 
Mr. Gladstone, though for all I know it may go back 
to generations before he was born. Mr. Gladstone, so 
the story ran, was present at a dinner where among 
the guests was a distinguished Japanese ; and, as not 
seldom happened, Mr. Gladstone monopolised the 
conversation, talking with fluency and seeming omni- 
science on a vast range of subjects, among which Japan 
came in for its share of attention. The distinguished 
stranger was asked later for his opinion of the English 
statesman. "A wonderful man," he said, "a truly 
wonderful man ! He seems to know all about every- 
thing in the world except Japan. He knows nothing 
at all about Japan." 

The specialist in a single subject can always find the 
holes in the information on that subject of the " uni- 
versal specialist." But it is worth noticing that, like 
almost every other salient trait of the American charac- 
ter, this American desire to become a universal specialist 
— this reaching after the all-culture and all-knowledge 
— is an essentially Anglo-Saxon or English character- 
istic. The German may be content to spend his whole 
life laboriously probing into one small hole. The 
Frenchman (let me say again that I thoroughly recog- 
nise that all national generalisations are unsound) will 
cheerfully wave aside with a la-la-la whole realms of 
knowledge which do not interest him. But all Eng- 
lishmen and all Americans would be Crichtons and 
Sydneys if they could. And — perhaps on the prin- 
ciple of setting a thief to catch a thief — although the 
all-round man is the ideal of both peoples, each is 



206 The Twentieth Century American 

equally suspicious of an intellectual rotundity (in an- 
other person) too nearly complete. 

Americans rather like to repeat that story of Mr. 
Gladstone, when the talk is of English culture. 

The American as a rule is a better linguist than the 
Englishman, — he is quicker, that is, to pick up a 
modern language and likely to speak it with a better 
accent. " Never trust an Englishman who speaks 
French without an English accent," said Prince Bis- 
marck; and the remark, however unjust it may be to 
an occasional individual, showed a shrewd insight into 
the English character. There is always to be recog- 
nised the fact that there are tens — perhaps hundreds — 
of thousands of Englishmen who speak Hindustani, 
Pushtu, or the language of any one of a hundred remote 
peoples with whom the Empire has traffic, while the 
American has had no contact with other peoples which 
called for a knowledge of any tongue but his own, ex- 
cept that in a small way some Spanish has been useful. 
But so far as European languages go, the Englishman, 
in more or less constant and intimate relation with each 
of the peoples of Europe, has been so well satisfied of 
his own superiority to each that it has seemed vastly 
more fitting that they should learn his language than 
that he should trouble to learn theirs. Under any cir- 
cumstances, is it not obviously easier for each one of 
the European peoples to learn to talk English than 
for the Englishman to learn eight European tongues 
with eighty miscellaneous dialects? 

"When an Englishman does learn a foreign language, 
it is most commonly for literary or scholastic purposes, 
rather than (with the exception of French in certain 
classes) for conversational use. The American on the 



A Comparison in Culture 207 

other hand, having had no need of languages in the 
past, coming now in contact with the world, sees that 
there are three or four languages of Europe which it 
is most desirable that he should know, if only for 
commercial purposes ; and a language learned for com- 
mercial purposes must be mastered colloquially and 
idiomatically. The American is not distracted by the 
need of Sanskrit or of any one of the numerous more 
or less primitive tongues which a certain proportion 
of the English people must acquire if the business of 
the Empire is to go on. Nor is his vision confused by 
seeing all the European tongues jumbled, as it were, 
together before him at too close range. He can distin- 
guish which are the essential or desirable languages 
for his purposes ; and the rising generation of Ameri- 
cans is learning those languages more generally, and 
in a more practical way, than is the rising generation 
of Englishmen. 

And yet we have not crossed that morass ; — nor per- 
haps, however superior in folly we may be to the 
angels, is it desirable that we should in plain day- 
light. We have at most found some slight vantage- 
ground: thrown up a mole-hill of a Pisgah from which 
we can attain a distant view of what lies beyond 
the swamp, even if perchance we have taken some 
mirages and ignes fatui for solid landscape and actual 
illuminations. 

The ambitions and ideals of the two peoples are 
fundamentally alike ; nor is there so great a difference 
as appears on the surface in their method of striving 
to attain those ideals and realise those ambitions, albeit 
the American uses certain tools (modern he calls 



208 The Twentieth Century American 

them, the Englishman preferring to say new-fangled) 
to which the Englishman's hands have not taken 
kindly. It is natural that the English nation, having a 
so much larger past, should be more influenced by it 
than the American. It is natural that the American, 
conscious that his national character has but just 
shaped itself out of the void, with all the future before 
it, should look more to the present and the future than 
the Englishman. 

The Englishman prefers to turn almost exclusively 
to the study of antiquity — the art and philosophies and 
letters of past ages — for the foundation of his work, 
and thence to push on between almost strictly British 
lines. The American seeks rather to absorb only so 
much of the wisdom and taste of antiquity as may 
serve for an intelligent comprehension of the world- 
art, the world - philosophies, the world - literature of 
to-day, and then, borrowing what he will from each 
department of those, to strive on that foundation to 
build something better than any. There are many 
scholars and students in America who would prefer to 
see the people less eager to push on. There are many 
thinkers and educators in England who hold that 
English scholarship and training dwell altogether too 
much in the past and that it were better if England 
would look more abroad and would give larger atten- 
tion to the conditions of modern life — the conditions 
which her youth will have to meet in the coming 
generation. 

If an American were asked which of the two peoples 
was the more cultivated, the more widely informed, 
he would probably say : " You fellows have been 
longer at the game than we have. You 've had more 



A Comparison in Culture 209 

experience in the business ; but we believe we've got 
every bit as good raw material as you and a blamed 
sight better machinery. Also we are more in earnest 
and work that machinery harder than you. Maybe 
we are not turning out as good goods yet — and maybe 
we are. But it 's a dead sure thing that if we are n't 
yet, we 're going to." 

A common index to the degree of cultivation in any 
people is found in their everyday language — their 
spoken speech ; but here again in considering America 
from the British standpoint we have to be careful or 
we may be entrapped into the same fallacy as threat- 
ens us when we propose to judge the United States 
by its newspapers. In the first place the right of any 
people to invent new forms of verbal currency to meet 
the requirements of its colloquial exchange must be 
conceded. There was a time when an Americanism in 
speech was condemned in England because it was 
American. When so many of the Americanisms of ten 
years ago are incorporated in the daily speech even of 
educated Englishmen to-day, it would be affectation 
to put forward such a plea nowadays. Going deeper 
than this, we undoubtedly find that the educated Eng- 
lishman to-day speaks with more precision than the 
educated American. The educated Englishman speaks 
the language of what I have already called the public 
school and university class. But while the English- 
man speaks the language of that class, the Ameri- 
can speaks the language of the whole people. That 
is not, of course, entirely true, for there are grades of 
speech in the United States, but it is relatively 
true — true for the purpose of a comparison with the 
conditions in Great Britain. The Englishman may be 



210 The Twentieth Century American 

surprised at the number of solecisms committed in the 
course of an hour's talk by a well-to-do New Yorker 
whom he has met in the company of gentlemen in Eng- 
land. He would perhaps be more surprised to find a 
mechanic from the far West commit no more. The 
tongue of educated Englishmen is not the tongue of the 
masses — nor is it a difference in accent only, but in form, 
in taste, in grammar, and in thought If in England the 
well-to-do and gentle classes had commercial transac- 
tions only among themselves, it is probable that a cur- 
rency composed only of gold and silver would suffice 
for their needs ; copper is introduced into the coin- 
age to meet the requirements of the poor. American 
speech has its elements of copper for the same reason — 
that all may be able to deal in it, to give and take 
change in its terms. It is the same fact as we have 
met before, of the greater homogeneousness of the 
American people — the levelling power (for want of a 
better phrase) of a democracy. 

The Englishman may object, and with justice, that 
because an educated man must incorporate into his 
speech words and phrases and forms which are neces- 
sary for communication with the vulgar, there is no 
reason why he should not be able to reserve those 
forms and phrases for use with the vulgar only. A 
gentleman does not pay half-a-crown, lost at the card 
table to a friend, in coppers. Why cannot the edu- 
cated American keep his speech silver and gold for 
educated ears? All of which is just. There are 
people in the United States who speak with a precise- 
ness equal to that of the most exacting of English pre- 
cisians, but they are not fenced off as in England 
within the limits of a specified class ; while the com- 



A Comparison in Culture 211 

mon speech of the American people, which is used by 
a majority of those who would in England come 
within the limits of that fenced area, is much more 
careless in form and phrase than the speech of educated 
Englishmen. It may be urged that it is much less 
careless, and better and vastly more uniform, than any 
one of the innumerable forms of speech employed by 
the various lower classes in England ; which is true. 
The level of speech is better in America ; but the 
speech of the educated and well-to-do is generally 
much better in England. All this, however (which is 
mere commonplace) may be conceded, but, though 
educated Americans may use a more debased speech 
than educated Englishmen, the point is that it is not 
safe to argue therefrom to an inferiority in culture in 
America ; because the American uses his speech for 
other and wider purposes than the Englishman. The 
different American classes, just as they dress alike, 
read the same newspapers and magazines, and, within 
limits, eat the same food, so they speak the same 
language. It is unjust to compare that language with 
the language used in England only by the educated 
classes. 

But, what is an infinitely larger fact, the inferiority 
of the American speech to the English is daily and 
rapidly disappearing. Twenty years ago, practically 
all American speech fell provincially on educated 
English ears. That is far from being the case to-day; 
and what is most interesting is that the alteration has 
not come about as the result of a change in the dic- 
tion of Americans only. The change has been in Eng- 
lishmen also. To whatever extent American speech 
may have improved, it is certain also that English 



212 The Twentieth Century American 

speech has become much less precise — much less uni- 
form among the educated and " gentlemanly " classes — 
and English ears are consequently less exacting. 

With the gradual elimination of class distinctions in 
England, or rather with the blurring of the lines which 
separate one class from another, a multitude of persons 
pass for " gentlemen " in England to-day who could 
not have dreamed — and whose fathers certainly did 
not dream — of being counted among the gentry thirty- 
five years ago. The fact may be for good or ill ; but 
one consequence has been that the newcomers, thrust- 
ing up into the circles above them, have taken with 
them the speech of their former associates, so that one 
hears now, in nominally polite circles, tones of voice, 
forms of speech, and the expression of points of view 
which would have been impossible in the youth of 
people who are now no more than middle-aged. 

There was a time when the dress proclaimed the 
man of quality at once. That distinction began to 
pass away with the disappearance of silk and ruffles 
and wigs from masculine costume. For a century 
longer, the shibboleths of voice and manner kept their 
force. But now those too are going ; and the result is 
that the English speech of the educated class has be- 
come less precise and less uniform. The same speech 
is now common to a larger proportion of the people. 
In the days when nearly all the members of educated 
society — we are speaking of the men only, for they 
only counted in those days — had been to one or other 
of the same " seven great public schools " (which not 
one public school man in a hundred can name cor- 
rectly to-day) and to one or other of the same two 
universities, they kept for use among themselves all 



A Comparison in Culture 213 

through their after life the forms of speech, the catch- 
words, the classical references which passed current in 
their school and undergraduate days. It was a free- 
masonry of speech on which the outsider could not in- 
trude. To-day, when not a quarter of the members of 
the same circles have been to one of those same seven 
schools nor a half to the same universities, when at 
least a quarter have been to no recognised classical 
school at all, it is impossible that the same free-masonry 
should prevail. There were a hundred trite classical 
quotations (no great evidence of scholarship, but made 
jestingly familiar by the old school curricula) which 
our fathers could use with safety in any chance com- 
pany of the society to which they were accustomed ; 
but even the most familiar of them would be a par- 
lous experiment in small talk to-day. They have 
vanished from common conversation even more com- 
pletely than they have disappeared from the debates 
of the House of Commons. And this is only a type of 
the change which has come over the educated speech 
of England, which we may regret or we may welcome. 
It may be sad that the English gentleman should 
speak in less literary form than he did thirty years 
ago, but the loss may be outweighed many times by 
the fact that so much larger a proportion of the people 
speak the same speech as he — not so refined as his 
used to be, but materially better than the majority of 
those who use it to-day could then have shaped their 
lips to frame. Few Englishmen at least would acqui- 
esce in the opinion that it showed a decay of culture 
in England — that the people were more ignorant or less 
educated. It may not be safe to draw an analogous 
conclusion in the case of the American people. 



si4 The Twentieth Century American 

A story well-known to most Englishmen has to do 
with the man who, arriving at Waterloo station to 
take a train, went into the refreshment room for a cup 
of coffee. In his haste he spilled the coffee over his 
shirt front and thereupon fell to incontinent cursing of 
" this d d London and South- Western Railway. " 

An American variant of, or pendant to, the same 
story tells of the Eastern man who approached Salt 
Lake City on foot and sat by the wayside to rest By 
ill luck he sat upon an ants' nest. Shortly he rose 
anathematising the " lustful Mormon city " and turned 
his face eastward once more, a Mormon-hater to the 
end of his days. 

Not much less illogical is an Englishman I know 
who, having spent some three weeks in the United 
States, loathes the people and all the institutions 
thereof, almost solely (though the noise of the ele- 
vated trains in New York has something to do with it) 
because he found that they applied the name of "robin" 
to what he calls " a cursed great thrush-beast. " Nearly 
every English visitor to the United States has been ir- 
ritated at first by discovering this, or some similar fact ; 
but it is not necessary on that account to hate the 
American people, to express contempt for their art and 
literature, and to belittle their commercial greatness 
and all the splendours of their history. 1 Rather ought 

i Mr. Archer, I find, has this delightful story : " A friend of 
mine returned from a short tour in the United States, declaring 
that he heartily disliked the country and would never go back 
again. Enquiry as to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited 
no more definite or damning charge than that ' they ' (a collec- 
tive pronoun presumed to cover the whole American people) 
hung up his trousers instead of folding them — or vice versa, for 



A Comparison in Culture 215 

Englishmen to like this application by the early colon- 
ists to the objects of their new environment of the 
cherished names of the well-known things of home. 
It shows that they carried with them into the wilder- 
ness in their hearts a love of English lane and hedge- 
row, and strove to soften the savagery of their new 
surroundingsby finding in the common wild things the 
familiar birds and flowers which had grown dear to 
them in far-off peaceful English villages. 

We will not now potter again over the well-trodden 
paths of the differences in phraseology in the two 
peoples which have been so fruitful a source of "im- 
pressions " in successive generations of English visitors 
to the United States, for the thing grows absurd when 
"car," and "store," and "sidewalk," and "elevator" 
are commonplaces on the lips of every London cock- 
ney; nor is there any need here to thread again the 
mazes of the well-worn discussion as to how far the 
peculiarities of modern American speech are only good 
old English forms which have survived in the New 
World after disappearance from their original haunts. 1 
The subject is worth referring to, however, for the very 
reason that its discussion has become almost absurd, — 
because by a process which has been going on, as we 
have already said, on both sides of the ocean simultan- 
eously, the differences themselves are disappearing, the 

I am heathen enough not to remember which is the orthodox 
process." 

1 But I cannot resist recording my astonishment at finding in 
Ben Jonson the phrase " to have a good time" used in precisely 
the sense in which the American girl employs it to-day, or at 
learning from Macaulay that Bishop Cooper in the time of 
Queen Elizabeth spoke of a "platform" in its exact modern 
American political meaning. 



216 The Twentieth Century American 

tongues of the two peoples are coming together and 
coalescing once more. The two currents into which 
the stream divided which flowed from that original 
well of English are drawing together — are, indeed, 
already so close that it will be but a very short time 
when the word " Americanism " as applied to a pe- 
culiarity in language will have ceased to be used in 
England. The " Yankee twang " and the " strong 
English accent" will survive in the two countries re- 
spectively for some time yet; but the written and 
spoken language of the two nations will be — already 
almost is — the same, and English visitors to the United 
States will have lost one fruitful source of impressions. 

The process has been going on in both countries, 
but in widely different forms. And this seems to me 
a peculiarly significant fact. In America the language 
of the people is constantly and steadily tending to 
improve ; and this tendency is, Englishmen should 
note, the result of a deliberate and conscious effort at 
improvement on the part of the people. This can 
hardly be insisted upon too strongly. 

The majority of " Americanisms " in speech were in 
their origin mere provincialisms — modes of expression 
and pronunciation which had sprung up unchecked in 
the isolated communities of a scattered people. They 
grew with the growth of the communities, until they 
threatened to graft themselves permanently on the 
speech of the nation. The United States is no longer 
a country of isolated and scattered communities. 
After the Civil War, and partly as a result thereof, 
but still more as a result of the knitting together of 
the whole country by the building of the American 
railway system, with the consequent sudden increase 



A Comparison in Culture 217 

in intimacy of communication between all parts, there 
developed in the people a new sense of national unity. 
England saw a revolution in her means of communica- 
tion when railways superseded stage-coaches and when 
the penny post was established; but no revolution 
comparable to that which has taken place in the 
United States in the present generation. Prior to 
1880 — really until 1883 — Portland, Oregon, was hardly 
less removed from Portland, Maine, than Capetown is 
from Liverpool to-day, and the discomforts of travel 
from one to the other were incomparably greater. 
Now they are morally closer together than London 
and Aberdeen, in as much as nowhere between the 
Atlantic and Pacific is there any such consciousness 
of racial difference as separates the Scots from the 
English. 

The work of federation begun by the original thir- 
teen colonies is not yet completed, for the individual- 
ity of the several States is destined to go on being 
continuously more merged — until it will finally be al- 
most obliterated — in the Federal whole ; but it may be 
said that in the last twenty- five years, and not until 
then, has the American people become truly unified — 
an entity conscious of its oneness and of its commercial 
greatness in that oneness, thinking common thoughts, 
co-operating in common ambitions, and speaking a 
common speech. Into that speech were at first ab- 
sorbed, as has been said, the peculiarities, localisms, 
and provincialisms which had inevitably grown up in 
different sections in the days of non-communication. 
But precisely those same causes — the settlement of the 
country, the construction of the railways, the develop- 
ment of the natural resources — which contributed to 



218 The Twentieth Century American 

the unification and laid the foundations of the great- 
ness, produced, -with wealth and leisure, new ambitions 
in the people. The desire for art and literature and, 
what we have called the all-culture, was no new 
growth, but an instinct inherited from the original 
English stock. Quickened it must have been by the 
moral uplifting of the people by the Civil War, but, 
as we have already seen, for some time after the close 
of that war the whole energies of the people were 
necessarily devoted to material things. Only with the 
completion of the repairing of the ravages of that war, 
and with the almost coincident settlement of the last 
great waste tracts of the country, were the people free to 
reach out after things immaterial and aesthetic ; and 
only with the accession of wealth, which again these 
same causes produced, came the possibility of gratify- 
ing the craving for those things. And in the longing 
for self-improvement and self-culture, thus newly in- 
spired and for the first time truly national, one of the 
things to which the people turned with characteristic 
earnestness was the improvement of the common 
speech. The nation has set itself purposefully and 
with determination to purify and prevent the further 
corruption of its language. 

The movement towards "simplification" of the 
spelling ma}* or may not be in the direction of purifica- 
tion, but it will be observed that the movement itself 
could not have come into being without the national 
desire for improvement The American speech is now 
the speech of a solidified and great nation ; and it 
cannot be permitted to retain the inelegancies and col- 
loquialisms which were not intolerable, perhaps, in the 
dialect of a locality in the days when that locality had 



A Comparison in Culture 219 

but restricted intercourse with other parts of the coun- 
try. This effort to purify the common tongue is con- 
scious, avowed, and sympathised with in all parts of 
the country alike. 

When any point of literary or grammatical form is 
under discussion in a leading American newspaper 
to-day, the dominant note is that of a purism more 
strict than will appear in a similar discussion in Eng- 
land. In many American newspaper offices the rules 
of "style" forbid the use of certain words and phrases 
which are accepted without question in the best 
London journals. There have of course always been 
circles — as, notoriously, in and around Boston, and, 
less notoriously but no less truly, in Philadelphia and 
New York — wherein the speech, whether written or 
spoken, has been as scrupulous in form and grammar as 
in the most scholarly circles in Great Britain. These 
circles corresponded to what we have called the public- 
school and university class of England, and, no more 
than it, did they speak the common speech of their 
country. Only now is the people as a whole con- 
sciously striving after an uplifting of such common 
speech. 

In England, on the other hand, the process that has 
been going on has been quite involuntary and is as yet 
almost entirely unconscious. 

We have spoken so far of only one factor in that 
process — namely, the democratisation of the English 
people which is in progress and the blurring of the 
lines between the classes. Co-operating with this are 
other forces. Just as the most well-bred persons can 
afford on occasions to be most careless of their man- 
ners — just as only an old-established aristocracy can be 



220 The Twentieth Century American 

truly reckless of the character of new associates whom 
it may please to take up — so it may be that the well- 
educated man, confident of his impeccability and alto- 
gether off his guard, more readily absorbs into his 
daily speech cant phrases and even solecisms than the 
half-educated who is ever watchful lest he slip. The 
American has a way of writing, figuratively, with a 
dictionary at his elbow and a grammar within reach. 
There are few educated Englishmen who do not con- 
sider their own authority — the authority drawn from 
their school and university training — superior to that 
of any dictionary or grammar, especially of any 
American one. 1 So it has come about that, while the 
tendency of the American people is constantly to be- 
come more exact and more accurate in its written and 
spoken speech, the English tendency is no less con- 
stantly towards a growing laxity ; and while the 
American has been sternly and conscientiously at 
work pruning the inelegancies out of his language, the 
Briton has been lightheartedly taking these same in- 
elegancies to himself. It is obviously impossible that 
such a twofold tendency can go on for long without 
the gulf between the quality of the respective lan- 
guages becoming appreciably narrower. 

The American writers who now occupy places on 
the staffs of London journals are thoroughly deserving 
of their places. They have earned these and retain 
them on the ground of their capacity as news gather- 
ers, and through the brilliancy of their descriptive 

1 Though it is worth noting that incomparably the best 
dictionary of the English language yet completed is an 
American one. 



A Comparison in Culture 221 

writing. They possess what is described as " news- 
paper ability" as opposed to "literary ability." It is, 
nevertheless, the fact that in the majority of the news- 
paper offices, the " copy " of these writers is permitted 
to pass through the press with an immunity from in- 
terference on the part either of editor or proof-reader, 
which, a decade back, would not have been possible in 
any London office. Thus the British public, unwarned 
and unconscious, is daily absorbing at its breakfast 
table, and in the morning and evening trains, American 
newspaper English, which is the output of English 
newspaper offices. It is not now contended that this 
English is any worse than the public would be likely 
to receive from the same class of English writers, but 
the fact itself is to be noted. I am not prepared to 
agree with Mr. Andrew Lang in holding the English 
writer necessarily blameworthy who " in serious work 
introduces, needlessly, into our tongue an American 
phrase." Such introductions, however needless, may 
materially enrich the language, and I should, even 
with the permission of Mr. Lang, extend the same 
latitude to the introduction of Scotticisms. 

A more important matter for consideration is the 
present "condition of the copyright laws of the two 
countries. English publishers understand well enough 
why it is occasionally cheaper, or, taking all the con- 
ditions together, more advantageous to have put into 
type in the United States rather than in Great Britain 
the work of a standard English novelist, and to bring 
the English edition into print from a duplicate set of 
American plates. On the other hand, it is exceptional 
for a novel, or for any book by an American writer, 
to be put into type in England for publication in both 



222 The Twentieth Century American 

countries. For the purpose of bringing the text of 
such books into line with the requirements of English 
readers, it is the practice of the leading American pub- 
lishers to have one division of their composing-rooms 
allotted to typesetting by the English standard, with 
the use by the proof-readers of an English dictionary. 
It occasionally happens, however, that the attention of 
these proof-readers to the task of securing an English 
text limits itself to a few typical examples, such as 
spelling " colour " with a " u " and seeing that " centre " 
does not appear as " center, " while all that constitutes 
the essence of American style, as compared with the 
English style, is passed unmolested and without 
change. 

Such a result is, doubtless, inevitable in the case of 
a work by an American writer who has his own idea 
of literary expression and his own standard of what 
constitutes literary style, but the resulting text not in- 
frequently gives ground for criticism on the part of 
English reviewers, and for some feeling of annoyance 
on the part of cultivated English readers. 

In the case of books by English authors which are 
put into type in American printing-offices, there is, of 
course, no question of modification of style or of form 
of expression, but with these, as stated, the proof- 
readers are not always successful in eliminating en- 
tirely the American forms of spelling. 

The English publisher, even though he give a per- 
sonal reading to the book in the form in which it 
finally leaves his hands, (and, in the majority of cases, 
having read it once in manuscript, he declines to go 
over the pages a second time, but contents himself 
with a cursory investigation of the detail of " colour," 



A Comparison in Culture 223 

of "centre,") is not infrequently dissatisfied, but it is 
too late for any changes in the text, and he can only 
let the volume go out. In the case of books printed 
in England from plates made in America, there is 
nothing at all to warn the reader ; while in the case of 
books bound in England from sheets actually printed 
in the United States, there is nothing which the 
reader is likely to notice; and in nine cases out of 
ten the Englishman is unconscious that he is reading 
anything but an English book. The critic may under- 
stand, and the man who has lived long in the United 
States and who can recognise the characteristics of 
American diction, assuredly will understand, but these 
form, of course, a very small class in the community ; 
and when the rest of the public is constantly reading 
American writing without a thought that it is other 
than English writing, it is hardly strange that American 
forms of speech creep daily more and more largely into 
the English tongue. What is really strange is that 
the educational authorities have been prepared to 
accept and to utilise in English schools many Ameri- 
can educational books carrying American forms of 
speech and American spelling. 

The morality or the wisdom of the English copyright 
laws is not at the moment under discussion, but it is 
my own opinion (which I believe to be the opinion of 
every Englishman who has given any attention to the 
matter) that not on any ground of literary criticism, or 
because of any canons of taste, but merely as a matter 
of pounds, shillings, and pence to England, and for the 
sake of securing additional employment for British 
labour, the laws of copyright are in no less radical and 
urgent need of amendment than the English postal 



224 The Twentieth Century American 

laws. What we are here concerned with, however, is 
the effect of the present condition of these laws as one 
of the contributory factors which are co-operating to 
lessen the difference, once so wide and now so narrow, 
between the American and the English tongue. 

Nor can there be any doubt of the result of this two- 
fold process if it be allowed to continue indefinitely, 
working in England towards a democratisation and 
Americanisation of the speech, and in America towards 
a higher standard of taste, based on earlier English 
literary models. The two currents, once divergent, 
now so closely confluent, will meet; but will they 
continue to flow on in one stream ? Or will the same 
tendencies persist, so that the currents will cross and 
again diverge, occupying inverse positions? 

In a hundred years from now, when, as a result of 
the apparently inevitable growth of the United States 
in wealth, in power, and in influence, its speech and 
all other of its institutions will come to be held in the 
highest esteem, is it possible that Londoners may 
vehemently put forward their claim to speak purer 
American than the Americans themselves — just as 
many Americans assert to-day that their speech is 
nearer to the speech of Elizabethan England than is 
the speech of modern Englishmen ? Is it possible 
that it will be only in the common language of Eng- 
lishmen that philologists will be able to find surviving 
the racy, good old American words and phrases of the 
last decades of the nineteenth century — a period which 
will be to American literature what the Elizabethan 
Age is to English. It may, of course, be absurd, but 
already there are certain individual Americanisms 
which have long been taboo in every reputable office in 



A Comparison in Culture 225 

the United States, but are used cheerfully and with- 
out comment in London dailies. 

Once more it seems necessary to take precaution 
lest I be interpreted as having said more than I really 
have said. It would be a mere impertinence to affect 
to pronounce a general judgment on the level of cul- 
ture or of achievement of the two peoples in all fields 
of art and effort ; and the most that an individual can 
do is to take such isolated examples drawn from one 
or from the other, as may serve in particular matters 
as some sort of a standard of measurement. What I 
am striving to convey to the average English reader 
is, of course, not an impression of any inferiority in 
the English, but only the fact that the Englishman's 
present estimate of the American is almost grotesquely 
inadequate. 



CHAPTER IX 
Politics and Politicians 

The " English- American " Vote — The Best People in Politics 
— What Politics Means in America — Where Corruption Creeps 
in — The Danger in England — A Presidential Nomination for 
Sale — Buying Legislation — Could it Occur in England? — A 
Delectable Alderman — Taxation while you Wait — Perils that 
England Escapes— The Morality of Congress — Political Corrup- 
tion and the Irish — Democrat and Republican. 

The American people ought cordially to cherish 
Englishmen who come to the United States to live, if 
only for the reason that they have never organised for 
political purposes. In every election, all over the 
United States, one hears of the Irish vote, the German 
vote, the Scandinavian vote, the Italian vote, the 
French vote, the Polish vote, the Hebrew vote, and 
many other votes, each representing a clientele which 
has to be conciliated or cajoled. But none has ever 
yet heard of the English vote or of an "English- 
American " element in the population. It is not that 
the Englishman, whether a naturalised American or 
not, does not take as keen an interest in the politics of 
the country as the people of any other nation ; on the 
contrary, he is incomparably better equipped than any 
other to take that interest intelligently. But he plays 
his part as if it were in the politics of his own country, 

226 



Politics and Politicians 227 

guided by precisely the same considerations as the 
American voters around him. 1 

The individual Irishman or German will often take 
pride in splitting off from the people of his own blood 
in matters political and voting "as an American." It 
never occurs to the Englishman to do otherwise. The 
Irishman and the German will often boast, or you will 
hear it claimed for them, that they become assimilated 
quickly and that " in time," or "in the second genera- 
tion," they are good Americans. The Englishman 
needs no assimilation ; but feels himself to be, almost 
from the day when he lands (provided that he comes to 
live and not as a tourist), of one substance and colour 
with the people about him. Not seldom he is rather 
annoyed that those around him, remembering that he 
is English, seem to expect of him the sentiments of a 
"foreigner," which he in no way feels. 

More than once, it is true, during my residence in 
America I have been approached by individuals or by 

1 For myself, I confess that my interest began somewhat pre- 
maturely. I had been in the country but a few months and had 
taken no steps towards naturalisation when I voted at an elec- 
tion in a small town in a Northwestern Territory where I had 
been living only for a week or two. My vote was quite illegal; 
but my friends (and every one in a small frontier town is one's 
friend) were all going to vote and told me to come along and 
vote too. The election, which was of the most friendly charac- 
ter, like the election of a club committee, proved to be closely 
contested, one man getting in (as City Attorney or Town Clerk 
or something) only by a single vote — my vote. Since then, 
the Territory has become a populous State, the frontier town 
has some hundred thousand inhabitants, and the gentleman 
whom I elected has been for some years a respected member of 
the United States Senate. I have never seen any cause to 
regret that illegal vote. 



228 The Twentieth Century American 

committees, with invitations to associate myself with 
some proposed political organisation of Englishmen 
" to make our weight felt " ; but in justice to those 
who have made the suggestion it should be said that it 
has always been the outcome of exasperation at a 
moment either when Fenianism was peculiarly ram- 
pant in the neighbourhood, or when members of other 
nationalities were doing their best to create ill-will be- 
tween Great Britain and the United States. The idea 
of organising, as the members of other nationalities 
have organised, for the mere purpose of sharing in the 
party plunder, has, I believe, never been seriously 
contemplated by any Englishmen in America ; though 
there are many communities in which their vote might 
well give them the balance of power. It would, as a 
rule, be easier to pick out — say, in Chicago — a South- 
erner who had lived in the North for ten years than an 
Englishman who had lived there for the same length of 
time. It would certainly be safer to guess the South- 
erner's party affiliation. 

The ideas of Englishmen in England about Ameri- 
can politics are vague. They have a general notion 
that there is a great deal of politics in America, that it 
is mostly corrupt, and that "the best people" do not 
take any interest in it. As for the last proposition, it 
is only locally or partially true, and quite untrue in 
the sense in which the Englishman understands it. 

The word " politics " means two entirely separate 
things in England and in the United States. Under- 
standing the word in its English sense, it is conspicu- 
ously untrue that the " best people " in America do 
not take at least as much an interest in politics as the 
" best people " take in England. Selecting as a repre- 



Politics and Politicians 229 

sentative of the "best people " of America, any citizen 
eminent in bis particular community — capitalist, landed 
proprietor or "real-estate owner," banker, manufact- 
urer, lawyer, railway president, or what not, — that man 
as a usual thing takes a very active interest in politics, 
and not in the politics of the nation only, but of his 
State and his municipality. He is known to be a pillar 
of one party or the other ; he gives liberally of his own 
funds and of the funds of his firm or company to the 
party treasury 1 ; he is consulted by, and advises with, 
the local committees ; representatives of the national 
committees or from other parts of the State call upon 
him for information ; he concerns himself intimately 
with the appointments to political office made from his 
section of the country ; he attends public meetings and 
entertains visiting speakers at his house; as far as 
may be judicious (and sometimes much further), he en- 
deavours by his example or precept to influence the 
votes and ways of thought of those in his service. The 
chances of his being sent to Congress or to the Senate, 
of his becoming a cabinet minister, being appointed 
to a foreign mission, or accepting a position on some 
commission of a public character, are vastly greater 
than with the man of corresponding position in 
England. So far from not taking an interest in pol- 
itics, as Englishmen understand the phrase, he is 

1 The laws governing expenditures for electoral purposes, 
and the conduct of elections generally, are stricter in England 
than in the United States, and I think it is not to be ques- 
tioned that there is much less bribery of voters. Largely 
owing to the exertions of Mr. Roosevelt, however, laws are 
now being enacted which will make it more difficult for cam- 
paign managers to raise the large funds which have heretofore 
been obtainable for election purposes. 



230 The Twentieth Century American 

commonly a most energetic and valuable supporter of 
his party. 

But — and here is the nub of the matter — politics in 
America include whole strata of political work which 
are scarcely understood in England. When the Eng- 
lish visitor is told in the United States that " our best 
people will not take any interest in politics," it is 
usually in the office of a financier, or at a fashionable 
dinner table, in New York or some other of the great 
cities. What is intended to be conveyed to him is 
that the " best people " will not take part in the active 
work in municipal politics or in that portion of the 
national politics which falls within the municipal area. 
The millionaire, the gentleman of refinement and leisure, 
will not " take off his coat " and attend primary meet- 
ings, or make tours of the saloons and meet Tammany 
or "the City Hall gang" on its own ground. As a 
matter of fact it is rather surprising to see how often 
he does it ; but it is spasmodically and in occasional 
fits of enthusiasm for Reform, " with a large R." And, 
whatever temporary value these intermittent efforts 
may have (and they have great value, if only as a warn- 
ing to the "gangs" that it is possible to go too far), 
they are in the long run of little avail against the 
constant daily and nightly work of the members of a 
" machine " to whom that work means daily bread. 

I have said that it is surprising to see how often 
these "best people" do go down into the slums and 
begin work at the beginning ; and the tendency to do 
so is growing more and more frequent. The reproach 
that they do not do it enough has not the force to-day 
that once it had. Meanwhile in England there is little 
complaint that the same people do not do that par- 



Politics and Politicians 231 

ticular work, for the excellent reason that that work 
does not exist to be done. It would only be tedious 
here to go into an elaborate explanation of why it does 
not exist. The reason is to be found in the differences 
in the political structure of the two countries — in the 
much more representative character of the govern- 
ment (or rather of the methods of election to office) 
in America — in the multiplication of Federal, State, 
county, and municipal office-holders — in the larger 
number of offices, including many which are purely 
judicial, which are elective, and which are filled by 
party candidates elected by a partisan vote — in the 
identification of national and municipal politics all 
over the country. 

Of all these causes, it is probably the last which is 
fundamentally most operative. The local democracy, 
local republicanism everywhere, is a part of the 
national Democratic or Republican organisation. The 
party as a whole is composed of these municipal units. 
Each municipal campaign is conducted with an eye to 
the general fortunes of the party in the State or the 
nation ; and the same power that appoints a janitor in 
a city hall may dictate the selection of a presidential 
candidate. 

Until very recently, this phenomenon was practically 
unknown in England. The " best person " — he who 
"took an interest in politics" as a Liberal or as a 
Conservative — was no more concerned, as Liberal or 
Conservative, in the election of his town officers than 
he was accustomed to take part in the weekly sing- 
song at the village public house. National politics 
did not touch municipal politics. Within the last two 
decades or so, however, there has been a marked 



232 The Twentieth Century American 

change, and not in London and a few large cities 
alone. 

Englishmen who have been accustomed to believe 
that the high standard of purity in English public life, 
as compared with what was supposed to be the stand- 
ard in America, was chiefly owing to the divorcement 
of the two, are not altogether gratified at the change or 
easy in their mind as to the future. London is still a 
long way from having such an organisation as Tam- 
many Hall in either the Moderate or Progressive 
party ; but it is not easy to see what insuperable ob- 
stacles would exist to the formation of such an or- 
ganisation, with certain limitations, if a great and 
unscrupulous political genius should arise among the 
members of either party in the London County Coun- 
cil and should bend his energies to the task. It is not, 
of course, necessary that, because Englishmen are ap- 
proximating to the American system in this particular, 
they should be unable to avoid adopting its worst 
American abuses. But it will do no harm if English- 
men in general recognise that what is, it is to be hoped, 
still far from inevitable, was a short time ago impos- 
sible. If Great Britain must admit an influence which 
has, even though only incidentally, bred pestilence 
and corruption elsewhere, it might be well to take in 
time whatever sanitary and preventive measures may 
be available against similar consequences. 1 

Meanwhile in the United States there is continually 

* In as much as a demand that the control of the police force 
should be vested in the County Council has appeared in the 
programme of one political party in London, it may be well to 
call the attention of Englishmen to the fact that it is pre- 
cisely the association of politics with the police which gives 
to American municipal rings their chief power for evil. 



Politics and Politicians 233 

being raised, in ever increasing volume, the cry for the 
separation of local and national politics. It is true 
that small headway has yet been made towards any 
tangible reform ; but the desire is there. Again, there- 
fore, it is curious that in politics, as in so many other 
things, there are two currents setting in precisely op- 
posing directions in the two countries — in America a 
reaction against corruptions which have crept in during 
the season of growth and ferment and an attempt to 
return to something of the simplicity of earlier models, 
and, simultaneously in England, hardly a danger, but 
a possibility of sliding into a danger, of admitting pre- 
cisely those abuses of which the United States is en- 
deavouring to purge itself. The tendencies at work 
are exactly analogous to those which, as we have seen, 
are operating to modify the respective modes of speech 
of the two peoples. What the ultimate effect of either 
force will be, it is impossible even to conjecture. But 
it is unpleasant for an Englishman to consider even 
the remotest possibility of a time coming, though long 
after he himself is dead, when the people of America 
will draw awful warnings from the corrupt state of 
politics in England, and bless themselves that in the 
United States the municipal rings which dominate and 
scourge the great cities in England are unknown. 

At present that time is far distant, and there can 
be no reasonable doubt that there is much more cor- 
ruption in public affairs in the United States than in 
England. The possibilities of corruption are greater, 
because there are so many more men whose influence 
or vote may be worth buying ; but it is to be feared 
that the evil does not exceed merely in proportion to 
the excess of opportunity. Granted that bribery and 



234 The Twentieth Century American 

the use of undue influence are most obvious and most 
rampant in those spheres which have not their counter- 
part in Great Britain — in municipal wards and pre- 
cincts, in county conventions and State legislatures — 
it still remains that the taint has spread upwards into 
other regions which in English politics are pure. 
There is every reason to think that the Englishman is 
justified in his belief that the motives which guide his 
public men and the principles which govern his public 
policy are, on the whole, higher than those which 
guide and inspire and govern the men or policies of 
any other nation. Bismarck's (if it was Bismarck's) 
confidence in the parole de gentleman is still justified. 
In America, a similar faith in matters of politics would 
at times be sorely tried. 

Perhaps as good an illustration as could be cited of 
the greater possibilities of corruption in the United 
States, is contained in a statement of the fact that a 
very few thousand dollars would at one time have 
sufficed to prevent Mr. Bryan from becoming the 
Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1896. 
This is not mere hearsay, for I am able to speak from 
knowledge which was not acquired after the event. 
Nor for one moment is it suggested that Mr. Bryan 
himself was thus easily corruptible, nor even that those 
who immediately nominated him could have been 
purchased for the sum mentioned. 

The fact is that for a certain specified sum the leaders 
of a particular county convention were willing to elect 
an anti-Bryan delegation. The delegation then elected 
would unquestionably control the State convention 
subsequently to be held; and the delegation to be 
elected again at that convention would have a very 



Politics and Politicians 235 

powerful influence in shaping the action of the Na- 
tional Convention at St. Louis. The situation was 
understood and the facts not disputed. Those to whom 
the application for the money was made took all things 
into consideration and determined that it was not 
worth it ; that it would be better to let things slide. 
They slid. If those gentlemen had foreseen the full 
volume of the avalanche that was coming, I think that 
the money would have been found. 

It was, however, better as it was. The motives 
which prompted the refusal of the money were, as I 
was told, not motives of morality. It was not any 
objection to the act of bribery, but a mere question 
of expediency. It was not considered that the " goods " 
were worth the money. But, as always, it was better 
for the country that the immoral act was not done. 
The Free Silver poison was working in the blood of 
the body politic, and it was better to let the malady 
come to a head and fight it strenuously than to drive 
it back and let it go on with its work of internal cor- 
ruption. Looking back now it is easy to see that the 
fight of 1896 must have come at some time, and it was 
best that it came when it did. The gentlemen who 
declined to produce the few thousand dollars asked of 
them (the sum was fifteen thousand dollars, if I re- 
member rightly, or three thousand pounds) would, a 
few weeks later, have given twice the sum to have 
the opportunity back again. Now, I imagine, they 
are well content that they acted as they did. 

As illustrating the methods which are not infrequent 
in connection with the work of the State legislatures, 
I may mention that I once acted (without premedita- 
tion) as witness to the depositing of two thousand 



236 The Twentieth Century American 

dollars in gold coin in a box at a safety deposit vault, 
by the representative of a great corporation, the key 
of which box was afterwards handed to a member of 
the local State legislature. The vote and influence 
of that member were necessary for the defeat of certain 
bills — bills, be it said, iniquitous in themselves — which 
would have cost that particular corporation many 
times two thousand dollars ; and two thousand dollars 
was the sum at which that legislator valued the 
aforesaid vote and influence. 

It is not always necessary to take so much precau- 
tion to secure secrecy as was needed in this case. The 
recklessness with which State legislators sometimes 
accept cheques and other easily traceable media of 
exchange is a little bewildering, until one understands 
how secure they really are from any risk of informa- 
tion being lodged against them. A certain venerable 
legislator in one of the North-western States some years 
ago gained considerable notoriety, of a confidential 
kind, by being the only member of his party in the 
legislature at the time who declined to accept his share 
in a distribution which was going on of the mortgage 
bonds of a certain railway company. It was not high 
principle nor any absurd punctiliousness on his part 
that made him decline. " In my youth," said he to 
the representative of the railway company, " I was an 
earnest anti-slavery man and I still recoil from bonds." 
It was said that he received his proportion of the pool 
in a more negotiable form. 

It would be easy, even from my own individual 
knowledge, to multiply stories of this class ; but the 
effect would only be to mislead the English reader, 
while the American is already familiar with such 



Politics and Politicians 237 

stories in sufficiency. The object is not to insist upon 
the fact that there is corruption in American public 
life, but rather to show what kind of corruption it is, 
and that it is largely of a kind the opportunity for 
indulgence in which does not exist in England. The 
method of nominating candidates for Parliament in 
England removes the temptation to "influence" pri- 
maries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State 
legislatures, railway and other corporations are not 
exposed to the same system of blackmail. 

Let us suppose that each county in England had its 
legislature of two chambers, as every State has in 
America, the members of these legislatures being 
elected necessarily only from constituencies in which 
they lived, so that a slum district of a town was 
obliged to elect a slum-resident, a village a resident 
of that village ; let us further suppose that by the mix- 
ture of races in the population certain districts could 
by mere preponderance of the votes be expected to 
elect only a German, a Scandinavian, or an Irishman 
— in each case a man who had been perhaps, but a few 
years before, an immigrant drawn from a low class in 
the population of his own country ; give that legisla- 
ture almost unbridled power over all business institu- 
tions within the borders of the county, including the 
determination of rates of charge on that portion of 
the lines of great railway companies which lay within 
the county borders — is there not danger that that power 
would be frequently abused? When one party, after 
a long term of trial in opposition, found itself suddenly 
in control of both houses, would it always refrain 
from using its power for the gratification of party pur. 
poses, for revenge, and for the assistance of its own 



238 The Twentieth Century American 

supporters? Local feeling sometimes becomes, even 
in England, much inflamed against a given railway 
company, or some large employer of labour, or great 
landlord, whether justly or not. It may be that in the 
case of a railway, the rates of fare are considered high, 
the train service bad, or the accommodations at the 
stations poor. At such a time a local legislature 
would be likely to pass almost any bill that was intro- 
duced to hurt that railway company, merely as a 
means of bringing pressure to bear upon it to correct 
the supposed shortcomings. It obviously then be- 
comes only too easy for an unscrupulous member to 
bring forward a bill which will have plausible colour 
of public-spirited motive, and which if it became a law 
would cost the railway company untold inconvenience 
and many tens of thousands of pounds ; and the rail- 
way company can have that bill withdrawn or " side- 
tracked " for a mere couple of hundred. 

Personally I am thankful to say that I have such 
confidence in the sterling quality of the fibre of the 
English people (so long as it is free, as it is in Eng- 
land, from Irish or other alien influence) as to believe 
that, even under these circumstances, and with all 
these possibilities of wrong-doing, the local legislatures 
would remain reasonably honest. But what might 
come with long use and practice, long exposure to 
temptation, it is not easy to say. Some things occur 
in the colonies which are not comforting. If, then, the 
corruption in American politics be great, the evil is 
due rather to the system than to any inherent inferi- 
ority in the native honesty of the people. Their 
integrity, if it falls, has the excuse of abundant 
temptation. 



Politics and Politicians 239 

The most instructive experience, I think, which I 
myself had of the disregard of morality in the realm 
of municipal politics was received when I associated 
myself, sentimentally rather than actively, with a 
movement at a certain election directed towards the 
defeat of one who was probably the most corrupt alder- 
man in what was at the time perhaps the corruptest 
city in the United States. Of the man's entire de- 
pravity, from a political point of view, there was not 
the least question among either his friends or his ene- 
mies. Nominally a Democrat, his vote and policy 
were never guided by any other consideration than 
those of his own pocket. On an alderman's salary 
(which he spent several times over in his personal ex- 
penditure each year), without other business or visible 
means of making money, he had grown wealthy — 
wealthy enough to make his contributions to campaign 
funds run into the thousands of dollars, — wealthy 
enough to be able always to forget to take change for 
a five-dollar or a ten-dollar bill when buying anything 
in his own ward, — wealthy enough to distribute regu- 
larly (was it five hundred or a thousand?) turkeys 
every Thanksgiving Day among his constituents. No 
one pretended to suggest that his money was drawn 
from any other source than from the public funds, 
from blackmail, and from the sale of his vote and 
influence in the City Council. In that Council he 
had held his seat unassailably for many years through 
all the shifting and changing of parties in power. But 
a spirit of reform was abroad and certain public-spirited 
persons decided that it was time that the scandal of 
his continuance in office should be stopped. The same 
conclusion had been arrived at by various campaign 



240 The Twentieth Century American 

managers and bodies of independent and upright citi- 
zens on divers preceding occasions, without any 
result worth mentioning. But at last it seemed that 
the time had come. There were various encouraging 
signs and portents in the political heavens and all augu- 
ries were favourable. There were, it is true, experi- 
enced politicians who shook their heads. They blessed 
us and wished us well. They even contributed liber- 
ally to our campaign fund ; but the most experienced 
among them were not hopeful. 

It was a vigorous campaign — on our side ; with 
meetings, brass bands, constant house-to-house can- 
vassing, and processions ad libitum. On the other side, 
there was no campaign at all to speak of ; only the 
man whom we were seeking to unseat spent some por- 
tion of every day and the whole of every night going 
about the ward from saloon to saloon, always forget- 
ting the change for those five-dollar and ten- dollar 
bills, always willing to cheer lustily when one of our 
processions went by, and, as we heard, daily increasing 
his orders for turkeys for the approaching Thanksgiv- 
ing season. 

So far as the saloon keepers, the gamblers, the own- 
ers and patrons of disorderly houses went, we had no 
hope of winning their allegiance ; but, after all, they 
were a small numerical minority of the voters of the 
ward. The majority consisted of low-class Italians, 
unskilled labourers, and it was their votes that must 
decide the issue. There was not one of them who was 
not thoroughly talked to, as well as every member of 
his family of a reasoning age. There was not one who 
did not fully recognise that the alderman was a thief 
and an entirely immoral scamp ; but their labour was 



Politics and Politicians 241 

farmed by, perhaps, half a dozen Italian contractors. 
These men were the Alderman's henchmen. As long 
as he continued in the Council, he was able to keep 
their men employed — on municipal works and on the 
work of the various railway and other large corpora- 
tions which he was able to blackmail. We, on our 
part, had obtained promises of employment, from 
friends of decent government regardless of politics in 
all parts of the city, for approximately as many men 
as could possibly be thrown out of work in case of an 
upheaval. But of what use were these, more or less 
unverifiable, promises, when on the eve of the election 
the half a dozen contractors (who of course had grown 
rich with their alderman's continuance in office) gave 
each individual labourer in the ward to understand 
clearly that if the present alderman was defeated each 
one of them would have to go and live somewhere — 
live or starve, — for not one stroke of work would they 
ever get so long as they lived in that ward ? 

It was, as I have said, a vigorous campaign on our 
side ; and the Delectable One was re-elected by some- 
thing more than his usual majority. On the night of 
the election it was reported — though this may have 
been mere rumour — that the bills which he laid on the 
counter of each saloon in the ward (and always forgot 
to take any change) were of the value of fifty dollars 
each. That was some years ago, but I understand 
that he is still in that same City Council, representing 
that same ward. 

It was in the same city that one year I received no- 
tice of my personal property tax, the amount assessed 
against me being about ten times higher than it ought 
to have been. Experience had taught me that it was 
16 



242 The Twentieth Century American 

useless to make any protest against small impositions, 
but a multiplication of my obligations by tenfold was 
not to be submitted to without a struggle. I wrote 
therefore to the proper authority, making protest, and 
was told that the matter would be investigated. After 
a lapse of some days, I was invited to call at the City 
Hall. There I was informed by one of the subordinate 
officials that it was undoubtedly a case of malice — that 
the assessment had been made by either a personal or 
a political enemy. I was then taken to see the Chief. 
The Chief was a corpulent Irishman of the worst type. 
My guide leaned over him and in an undertone, but 
not so low that I did not hear, gave him a brief resume 
of the story, stating that it was undoubtedly a case of 
intentional injustice, and concluding with an account 
of myself and my interests which showed that the 
speaker had taken no little trouble to post himself 
upon the subject. He emphasised the fact of my asso- 
ciation with the press. At this point for the first time 
the Chief evinced some interest in the tale. His intel- 
ligence responded to the word "newspapers" as 
promptly as if an electrical current had suddenly been 
switched into his system. " H'm ! newspapers ! " he 
grunted. Then, heaving his bulk half round in his 
chair so as partially to face me 

" This is a mistake," he said. " We will say no 
more about it. Your assessment 's cancelled." 

"I beg your pardon," I said, "I have no objection 
to paying one-tenth of the amount. If an ' ' is cut 
off the end " 

"That's all right," he said. " The whole thing is 
cut off." 

I made another protest, but he waved me away and 



Politics and Politicians 243 

my guide led me from the room. Because it was 
opined that, through the press, I might be able to 
make myself objectionable if the imposition was per- 
sisted in, I paid no tax at all that year. "Which was 
every whit as immoral as the original offence. 

Stories of this class it would be easy to multiply in- 
definitely ; but again I say that it is not my desire to 
insist on the corruptness which exists in American 
political life, but rather to explain to English readers 
what the nature of that corruptness is and in what 
spheres of the political life of the country it is able to 
find lodgment. What I have endeavoured to illus- 
trate is, first, how the peculiar political system of the 
United States may, under some exceptional conditions, 
make it possible for even the nomination of a Presi- 
dent to be treated as a matter of purchase, though the 
candidate himself and those who immediately surround 
him may be of incorruptible integrity; second, the 
unrivalled opportunities for bribery and other forms 
of political wrong-doing furnished by the existence of 
the State legislatures, with their eight thousand mem- 
bers, drawn necessarily from all ranks and elements of 
the population, and possessing exceptional power over 
the commercial affairs of the people of their respective 
States ; and, third, the methods by which, in certain 
large cities, power is attained, used, and abused by the 
municipal " bosses " of all degrees, a condition of affairs 
which is in large measure only made possible by the 
identification of local and national politics and political 
parties. In each case the conditions which make the 
corruption possible do not exist in England, even 
though in the last named (the identification of local 
with national politics and parties) the tendency in Great 



244 The Twentieth Century American 

Britain is distinctly in the direction of the American 
model. It is, perhaps, an inevitable resultof the work- 
ing of the Anglo-Saxon " particularistic " spirit, which 
ultimately rebels against any form of national govern- 
ment or of national politics in which the individual 
and the individual of each locality, is debarred from 
making his voice heard. 

As for the corruptness which is supposed to exist in 
Congress itself, this I believe to be largely a matter of 
partisan gossip and newspaper talk. It may be that 
every Congress contains among its members a few 
whose integrity is not beyond the temptation of a 
direct monetary bribe ; and it would perhaps be 
curious if it were not so. But it is the opinion of the 
best informed that the direct bribery of a member of 
either the Senate or the House is extremely rare. It 
happens, probably, all too frequently that members con- 
sent to acquire at a low figure shares in undertakings 
which are likely to be favourably affected by legis- 
lation for which they vote, in the expectation or hope 
of profit therefrom ; but it is exceedingly difficult to say 
in any given case whether a member's vote has been in- 
fluenced by his financial interest (whether, on public 
grounds, he would not have voted as he did under any 
circumstances), and at what point the mere employment 
of sound business judgment ends and the prostitution of 
legislative influence begins. The same may be said of 
the accusations so commonly made against members 
of making use of information which they acquire in 
the committee room for purposes of speculation. 

Washington, during the sessions of Congress is full 
of "lobbyists" — i e., men who have no other reason 



Politics and Politicians 245 

for their presence at the capital than to further the 
progress of legislation in which they are interested or 
who are sent there for the purpose by others who have 
such an interest ; but it is my conviction (and I know 
it is that of others better informed than myself) that 
the instances wherein the labours of a lobbyist go 
beyond the use of legitimate argument in favour of 
entirely meritorious measures are immensely fewer 
than the reader of the sensational press might suppose. 
The American National Legislature is, indeed, a vastly 
purer body than demagogues, or the American press, 
would have an outsider believe. 

There is no doubt that large manufacturing and 
commercial concerns do exert themselves to secure the 
election to the House, and perhaps to the Senate, of 
persons who are practically their direct representatives, 
their chief business in Congress being the shaping of 
favourable legislation or the warding off of that which 
would be disadvantageous to the interests which are 
behind them. Undonbtedly also such large concerns, 
or associated groups of them, can bring considerable 
pressure to bear upon individual members in divers 
ways, and there have been notorious cases wherein it 
has been shown that this pressure has been un- 
scrupulously used. Except in the case of the rail- 
ways, which have only a secondary interest in tariff 
legislation, this particular abuse must be charged to 
the account of the protective policy, and its develop- 
ment in some measure would perhaps be inevitable in 
any country where a similar policy prevailed. 

In the British Parliament there are, of course, few 
important lines of trade or industry which are not 
abundantly represented, and both Houses contain 



246 The Twentieth Century American 

railway directors and others who speak frankly as the 
representatives of railway interests, and lose thereby 
nothing of the respect of the country or their fellow- 
members. It is not possible here to explain in detail 
why the assumption, which prevails in America, that 
a railway company is necessarily a public enemy, and 
that any argument in favour of such a corporation is an 
argument against the public welfare, does not obtain 
in England. It will be necessary later on not only to 
refer to the fact that fear of capitalism is immensely 
stronger in America than it is in England, but also to 
explain why there is good reason why it should be so. 
For the present, it is enough to note that it is possible 
for members of Parliament to do, without incurring 
a shadow of suspicion of their integrity, things which 
would damn a member of Congress irreparably in the 
eyes alike of his colleagues and of the country. There 
is hardly a railway bill passed through Parliament the 
supporters of which would not in its passage through 
Congress have to run the gauntlet of all manner of 
insinuation and abuse ; and when the sensational 
press of the United States raises a hue and cry of 
" Steal ! " in regard to a particular measure, the Eng- 
lishman (until he understands the difference in the 
conditions in the two countries) may be bewildered by 
finding on investigation that the bill is one entirely 
praiseworthy which would pass through Parliament as 
a matter of course, the only justification for the outcry 
being that the legislation is likely, perhaps most in- 
directly, to prove advantageous to some particular 
industry or locality. The fact that the measure is just 
and deserving of support on merely patriotic grounds 
is immaterial, when party capital can be made from 



Politics and Politicians 247 

such an outcry. I have on more than one occasion 
known entirely undeserved suffering to be inflicted in 
this way on men of the highest character who were 
acting from none but disinterested motives ; and he 
who would have traffic with large affairs in the United 
States must early learn to grow callous to newspaper 
abuse. 

In wider and more general ways than have yet been 
noticed, however, the members of Congress are sub- 
jected to undue influences in a measure far beyond 
anything known to the members of Parliament 

In the colonial days, governors not seldom com- 
plained of the law by which members of the provincial 
assemblies could only be elected to sit for the towns 
or districts in which they actually resided. The same 
law once prevailed in England, but it was repealed in 
the time of George III., and had been disregarded in 
practice since the days of Elizabeth. 1 Under the Con- 
stitution of the United States it is, however, still nec- 
essary that a member of Congress should be a resident 
(or " inhabitant ") of the State from which he is elected. 
In some States it is the law that he must reside in the 
particular district of the State which elects him, and 
custom has made this the rule in all. A candidate re- 
jected by his own constituency, therefore, cannot stand 
for another ; and it follows that a member who desires 
to continue in public life must hold the good will of 
his particular locality. 

So entirely is this accepted as a matter of course 
that any other system (the British system for instance) 
seems to the great majority of Americans quite un- 
natural and absurd ; and it has the obvious immediate 

1 (See Bryce, The American Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 188, 



248 The Twentieth Century American 

advantage that each member does more truly " repre- 
sent" his particular constituents than is likely to be 
the case when he sits for a borough or a Division in 
which he may never have set foot until he began to 
canvas it. On the other hand, it is an obvious disad- 
vantage that when a member for any petty local 
reason forfeits the good will of his own constituency, 
his services, no matter how valuable they may be, are 
permanently lost to the State. 

The term for which a member of the Lower House 
is elected in America is only two years, so that a 
member who has any ambition for a continuous 
legislative career must, almost from the day of his 
election, begin to consider the chance of being re- 
elected. As this depends altogether on his ability to 
hold the gratitude of his one constituency, it is in- 
evitable that he should become more or less engrossed 
in the effort to serve the local needs ; and a con- 
stituency, or the party leaders in a constituency, 
generally, indeed, measure a man's availability for re- 
election by what is called his " usefulness." 

If you ask a politician of local authority whether 
the sitting member is a good one, he will reply, " No ; 
he hasn't any influence at Washington at all. He 
can't do a thing for us ! " Or, u Yes, he 's pretty good ; 
he seems to get things through all right." The 
"things" which the member "gets through" may be 
the appointment of residents of the district to minor 
government positions, the securing of appropriations 
of public moneys for such works as the dredging or 
widening of a river channel to the advantage of the 
district or the improvement of the local harbour, and the 
passage of bills providing for the erection in the dis- 



Politics and Politicians 249 

trict of new post-offices or other government buildings. 
Many other measures may, of course, be of direct local 
interest; but a member's chief opportunities for earn- 
ing the gratitude of his constituency fall under the 
three categories enumerated. 

It is obvious that two years is too short a term for 
any but an exceptionally gifted man to make his mark, 
either in the eyes of his colleagues or of his constitu- 
ency, by conspicuous national services. Even if 
achieved, it is doubtful if in the eyes of the majority of 
the constituencies (or the leaders in those constituen- 
cies) any such impalpable distinction would be held to 
compensate for a demonstrated inability to get the 
proper share of local advantages. The result is that 
while the member of Parliamant may be said to con- 
sider himself primarily as a member of his party and his 
chief business to be that of co-operating with that party 
in securing the conduct of National affairs according to 
the party beliefs, the member of Congress considers 
himself primarily as the representative of his district 
and his chief business to be the securing for that dis- 
trict of as many plums from the Federal pie as possible. 

Out of these conditions has developed the preva- 
lence of log-rolling in Congress : " You vote for my 
post-office and I '11 help you with your harbour appro- 
priation." Such exchange of courtesies is continual 
and, I think, universal. The annual Eiver and Har- 
bour Bill (which last year appropriated $25,414,000 of 
public money for all manner of works in all corners of 
the country) is an amazing legislative product. 

Another result is that the individual member must 
hold himself constantly alert to find what his 
" people " at home want : always on the lookout for 



250 The Twentieth Century American 

signs of approval or disapproval from his constituency. 
And the constituency on its side does not hesitate to 
let him know just what it thinks of him and precisely 
what jobs it requires him to do at any given moment. 
Nor is it the constituency as a whole, through its rec- 
ognised party leaders, which alone thinks that it has a 
right to instruct, direct, or influence its representative, 
but individuals of sufficient political standing to con- 
sider themselves entitled to have their private interest 
looked after, manufacturing and business concerns the 
payrolls of which support a large number of voters, 
labour unions, and all sorts of societies and organisa- 
tions of various kinds — they one and all assert their right 
to advise the Congressman in his policies or to call for 
his assistance in furthering their particular ends, under 
threat, tacit or expressed, of the loss of their support 
when he seeks re-election. The English member of 
Parliament thinks that he is subjected to a sufficiency 
of pressure of this particular sort ; but he has not to 
bear one-tenth of what is daily meted out to his Amer- 
ican confrere, nor is he under any similar necessity of 
paying attention to it 

Under such conditions it is evident that a Congress- 
man can have but a restricted liberty to act or vote 
according to his individual convictions. It is only 
human that, in matters which, are not of great national 
import, a man should at times be willing to believe 
that his personal opinions may be wrong when adher- 
ence to those opinions would wreck his political career. 
So the Congressman too commonly acquires a habit of 
subservience which is assuredly not wholesome either 
for the individual or for the country ; and sometimes the 
effort to trim sails to catch every favouring breeze has 



Politics and Politicians 251 

curious oblique results. As an instance of this may be 
cited the action taken by Congress in regard to the army 
canteen. A year or more back, the permission to 
army posts to retain within their own limits and sub- 
ject to the supervision of the post authorities, a canteen 
for the use of soldiers, was abolished. The soldiers 
have since been compelled to do their drinking out- 
side, and, as a result, this drinking has been done 
without control or supervision, and has produced 
much more serious demoralisation. The action of 
Congress was taken in the face of an earnest and 
nearly unanimous protest from experienced army offi- 
cers — the men, that is, who were directly concerned 
with the problem in question. The Congressmen 
acted as they did under the pressure of the Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union, and with the dread 
lest a vote for the canteen should be interpreted as 
a vote for liquor, and should stand in the way of their 
own political success. 

From what has been said it will be seen that the 
member of Congress is compelled to give a deplorably 
large proportion of his time and thought to paltry local 
matters, leaving a deplorably small portion of either to 
be devoted to national questions ; while in the exercise 
of his functions as a legislator he is likely to be influ- 
enced by a variety of motives which ought to be quite 
impertinent and are often unworthy. These things 
however seem to be almost inevitable results of the 
national political structure. The individual corrupti- 
bility of the members of either House (their readiness, 
that is to be influenced by any considerations, other 
than that of their re-election, of their own interests, 
financial or otherwise), I believe to be grossly exag- 



252 The Twentieth Century American 

gerated in the popular mind. Certainly a stranger is 
likely to get the idea that the Congress is a much less 
honourable and less earnest body than it is. 

The subject of the corruptness of the public service 
in the larger cities brings up again a matter which 
has been already touched upon, namely the extent to 
which this corruptness is in its origin Irish and not an 
indigenous American growth. Under the favourable 
influences of American political conditions the Irish 
have developed exceptional capacity for leadership (a 
capacity which they are also showing in some of the 
British colonies) and they do not generally use their 
ability or their powers for the good of the community. 
The rapidity with which the Irish immigrant blossoms 
into political authority is a commonplace of American 
journalism : 

" Ere the steamer that brought him had got out of hearing, 
He was Alderman Mike introducing a bill." 

It is commonly held by Americans that all political 
corruptness in the United States (certainly all munici- 
pal wickedness) is chargeable to Irish influence ; but it 
is a position not easy to maintain in the face of the 
example of the city of Philadelphia, the government 
of which has from the beginning been chiefly in the 
hands of Americans, many of whom have been members 
of the oldest and best Philadelphia families. Yet the 
administration of Philadelphia has been as corrupt and 
as openly disregardful of the welfare of the community 
as ever was that of New York. While Irishmen are gen- 
erally Democrats, both Philadelphia and the State of 
Pennsylvania are overwhelmingly Republican and 



Politics and Politicians 253 

devoted to the protective policy under which so many of 
the industries of the State have prospered exceedingly. 
Those who have fought for the cause of municipal re- 
form in Philadelphia find that, while the masses of the 
people of the city would prefer good government, it is 
almost impossible to get them to reject an official can- 
didate of the Eepublican party. The Eepublican 
"bosses" have thus been able to impose on the city 
officials of the worst kind, who have served them faith- 
fully to the disaster of the community. 1 None the less, 
notwithstanding particular exceptions, it is a fact that as 
a general rule the corrupt maladministration of affairs 
in American cities is the direct result of Irish influence. 
The opportunities of the Irish leaders for securing 
control of the city administration, or of certain im- 
portant and lucrative divisions of this administration, 
have been furthered, particularly in such cities as New 
York and San Francisco, by the influence they are 
able to gain over bodies of immigrants who are also 
in the fold of the Eoman Catholic Church, and who, 
on the ground of difference of language and other 
causes, have less quickness of perception of their own 
political opportunities. The Irish leaders have been 
able to direct in very large measure the votes of the 
Italians (more particularly the Italians from the South), 
the Bohemians, and the other groups of immigrants 
from Catholic communities. As the Irish immigration 
has decreased both absolutely and relatively, the 

1 Inasmuch as I have twice within a small space referred to 
evils which incidentally grow out of the protective system, lest 
it be thought that I am influenced by any partisan feeling, I 
had better state that my personal sympathies are strongly 
Republican and Protectionist. 



254 The Twentieth Century American 

numbers of voters supporting the leadership of the 
bosses of Tammany Hall and of the similar organisa- 
tions in Chicago and San Francisco have been made 
good, and in fact substantially increased, by the addition 
of Catholic voters of other nationalities. 

I wish the English reader to grasp f ally the signifi- 
cance of these facts before he allows the stories which 
lie hears of the municipal immorality which exists in 
the United States to colour too deeply his estimate of 
the character of the American people. That immoral- 
ity is chiefly Irish in its origin and is made continu- 
ously possible by the ascendency of the Irish over 
masses of other non- Anglo-Saxon peoples. The Celts 
were never a race of individual workers either as agri- 
culturists or in handicraft. That "law of intense per- 
sonal labour " which is the foundation of the strength 
of the Anglo-Saxon communities never commanded 
their full obedience, as the history of Ireland and the 
condition of the country to-day abundantly testify. It 
is not, then, the fault of the individual Irishman that 
when he migrates to America, instead of going out to 
the frontier to " grow up " with the territory or taking 
himself to agricultural work in the great districts of 
the West which are always calling for workers, he 
prefers to remain in the cities to engage when possible 
in the public service, or, failing that, to enter the 
domestic service of a private employer. 

It should not be necessary to say (except that Irish- 
American susceptibilities are sometimes extraordinarily 
sensitive) that I share to the full that admiration which 
all people feel for the best traits in the Irish character- 
but, in spite of individual exceptions, I urge that it is 
not in the nature of the race to become good and help- 



Politics and Politicians 255 

ful citizens according to Anglo-Saxon ideals, and that, 
as far as those qualities are concerned which have made 
the greatness of the United States, the contribution 
from the Irish element has been inconsiderable. The 
deftness of the Irishman in political organisation and 
his lack of desire for individual independence, as a 
result of which he turns either to the organising of a 
governing machine or to some form of personal service 
(in either case merging his own individuality) is as 
much foreign to the American spirit as is the docility 
of the less intelligent class of Germans under their 
political leaders — a docility which, until very recently 
has caused the German voters in America to be used 
in masses almost without protest. 

It is the Anglo-Saxon, or English, spirit which has 
played the dominant part in moulding the government ^ 
of the United States, which has made the nation what 
it is, which to-day controls its social usages. The Irish 
invasion of the political field may fairly be said to be 
in its essence an alien invasion ; and, while it may be 
to the discredit of the American people that they have 
allowed themselves in the past to be so engrossed in 
other matters that they have permitted that invasion 
to attain the success which it has attained, I do not 
fear that in the long run the masterful Anglo-Saxon 
spirit will suffer itself to be permanently over-ridden 
(any more than it has allowed itself to be kept in per- 
manent subjection in England), even in the large cities 
where the Anglo-Saxon voter is in a small minority. 
Ultimately it will throw off the incubus. In the mean- 
while it is unjust that Englishmen or other Europeans 
should accept as evidence of native American frailty 
instances of municipal abuses and of corrupt methods 



256 The Twentieth Century American 

in a city like New York, where it has not been by- 
native Americans that those abuses and those methods 
were originated or that their perpetuation is made pos- 
sible. On the contrary the American minority fights 
strenuously against them, and I am not sure that, being 
such a minority as it is, it has not made as good a fight 
as is practicable under most difficult conditions. The 
American people as a whole should not be judged by 
the conditions to which a portion of it submits un- 
willingly in certain narrow areas. 

It may be well to explain here (for it is a subject on 
which the Englishman who has lived in America is 
often consulted) that the Republican party may roughly 
be said to be the equivalent of the Conservative party 
in England, while the Democrats are the Liberals. It 
happens that a precisely reverse notion has (or had 
until very recent years) some vogue in England, the 
misconception being an inheritance from the times of 
the American Civil War. 

British sympathy was not nearly so exclusively 
with the South at the time of the war as is generally 
supposed in the United States ; none the less, the ruling 
and aristocratic classes in England did largely wish to 
see the success of the Southern armies. The South- 
erner, it was understood, was a gentleman, a man of 
mettle and spirit, and in many cases the direct descend- 
ant of an old English Cavalier family ; while the 
Northerners were for the most part but humdrum and 
commercially minded people who inherited the neces- 
sarily somewhat bigoted, if excellent, characteristics of 
their Dutch, Puritan, or Quaker ancestors. The view 
had at least sufficient historical basis to serve as an 



Politics and Politicians 257 

excuse if not as a justification. So it came about that 
those classes which came to form the backbone of the 
Conservative party were largely sympathisers with 
the South ; and, after the war, that sympathy naturally 
descended to the Democratic party rather than to the 
Northern Eepublicans. Except, however, in one par- 
ticular the fundamental sentiments which make a man 
a Eepublican or a Democrat to-day have nothing to do 
with the issues of war times. 

I do not know that any one has successfully defined 
the fundamental difference either between a Conserva- 
tive and a Liberal, or between a Republican and a 
Democrat, nor have I any desire to attempt it ; and 
where both parties in each country are in a constant 
state of flux and give-and-take, such a definition would 
perhaps be impossible. It may be that Euskin came 
as near to it as is practicable when he spoke of himself 
as "a Tory of the old school, — the school of Homer 
and Sir Walter Scott." 

Many people in either country accept their political 
opinions ready made from their fathers, their early 
teachers, or their chance friends, and remain all their 
lives believing themselves to belong to — and voting 
for — a party with which they have essentially nothing 
in sympathy. If one were to say that a Conservative 
was a supporter of the Throne and the Established 
Church, a Jingo in foreign politics, an Imperialist in 
colonial matters, an advocate of a strong navy and 
a disbeliever in free trade, tens of thousands of Con- 
servatives might object to having assigned to them one 
or all of these sentiments, and tens of thousands of 
Liberals might insist on laying claim to any of them. 
Precisely so is it in America. None the less the 



258 The Twentieth Century American 

Republican party in the mass is the party which 
believes in a strong Federal government, as opposed to 
the independence of the several States ; it is a party 
which believes in the principle of a protective tariff ; it 
conducted the Cuban War and is a party of Imperial 
expansion ; it is the party which has in general the 
confidence of the business interests of the country and 
fought for and secured the maintenance of the gold 
standard of currency. It is obvious that, however 
blurred the party lines may be in individual cases, the 
man who in England is by instinct and conviction a 
Conservative, must in America by the same impulse 
be a Republican. 

In both countries there is, moreover, a large element 
which furnishes the chief support to the miscellaneous 
third parties which succeed each other in public 
attention and whenever the lines are sharply drawn 
between the two great parties, the bulk of these 
can be trusted to go to the Liberal side in England 
and to the Democratic side in America. Nor is it 
by accident that the Irish in America are mostly 
Democrats. 

I am acutely aware of the inadequacy of such an 
analysis as the foregoing and that many readers will 
have cause to be dissatisfied with what I say; but I 
have known many Englishmen of Conservative lean- 
ings who have come to the United States understand- 
ing that they would find themselves in sympathy with 
the Democrats and have been bewildered at being 
compelled to call themselves Republicans. Whatever 
the individual policy of one or the other party may be 
at a given moment, ultimately and fundamentally the 
English Conservative, especially the English Tory, is a 



Politics and Politicians 259 

Republican, and the Liberal, especially the Radical, is 
a Democrat. Both Homer and Sir Walter Scott 
to-day would (if they found themselves in America) 
be Republicans. 



CHAPTER X 

American Politics in England 

The System of Parties — Interdependence of National and 
Local Organisations — The Federal Government and Sovereign 
States — The Boss of Warwickshire — The Unit System — Prime 
Minister Crooks — Lanark and the Nation — New York and 
Tammany Hall — America's Superior Opportunities for Wick- 
edness — But England is Catching up — Campaign Reminiscences 
— The " Hell-box " — Politics in a Gravel-pit — Mr. Hearst and 
Mr. Bryan. 

The subject of this chapter will, perhaps, be more 
easy of comprehension to the English reader if he will 
for a moment surrender his imagination into my charge 
while we transfer to England certain political conditions 
of the United States. 

There are in the first place, then, the great political 
parties, in the nation and in Parliament (Congress) ; 
with the fact always to be borne in mind that the 
members of Congress are not nominated by any 
central committee or association, but are selected and 
nominated by the people of each district. A candidate 
is not "sent down" to contest a given constituency. 
He is a resident of that constituency, selected in small 
local meetings by the voters themselves. 

Next, every County (State) has its own machinery 
of government, including a Governor, Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor, and other County officials as well as a bi-cameral 
Legislature, with a membership ranging from seventy 

260 



American Politics in England 261 

in some Counties to over three hundred in others. In 
these County Legislatures and governments, parties are 
split on precisely the same lines as in the nation and 
in Parliament. Members of the House of Commons 
have usually qualified for election by a previous term 
in the County Legislature, while members of the 
House of Lords are actually elected direct, not by the 
people in the mass, but by the members of the County 
Legislatures only, each county sending to Westminster 
two members so elected. Nor is it to be supposed 
that these County governments are governments in 
name only. 

It is not easy to imagine that in England the 
Counties, each with its separate and sovereign govern- 
ment, preceded the National Government and volun- 
tarily called it into existence only as a federation of 
themselves. But that, we must for the present under- 
stand, was indeed the course of history ; and when that 
federation was formed, the various Counties entrusted 
to the Central Government only a strictly limited 
list of powers. The Central Government was author- 
ised to treat with foreign nations in the name of the 
United Counties ; to maintain a standing army of 
limited size, and to create a' navy ; to establish postal 
routes, regardless of County boundaries ; to regulate 
commerce between the different Counties, to care for 
the national coast line and all navigable waters within 
the national dominions, and to levy taxes for national 
purposes. All powers not thus specifically conceded 
to the central authority were, in theory at least, re- 
served by the individual Counties to themselves ; and 
to-day a County government, except that it cannot 
interfere with the postal service within its borders, nor 



262 The Twentieth Century American 

erect custom-houses on its County lines to levy taxes 
on goods coming in from neighbouring Counties, is 
practically a sovereign government within its own 
territory. 

It is only within the last ten years that the right 
of the Central Government — the Crown — to use the 
King's troops to protect from violence the King's prop- 
erty, in the shape of the Royal mails, in defiance of 
the wishes of the Governor of a County, was established 
by a decision of the Supreme Court. The Governor 
protested that the suppression of mobs and tumults 
within his County borders was his business, his County 
police and militia being the proper instruments for the 
purpose, and for the Crown to intervene without his 
request and sanction was an invasion of the sovereign 
dignity of the County. 

Although so much has been said on this subject by 
various English writers, from Mr. Bryce downwards, 
few Englishmen, I think, have comprehended the 
theoretical significance of this independence of the in- 
dividual States, and fewer still grasp its practical im- 
portance. Perhaps the most instructive illustration of 
what it means is to be found in the dilemma in which 
the American government has, on two occasions in 
recent years, found itself from its inability to compel 
a particular State to observe the national treaty obli- 
gations to a foreign power. 

The former of the two cases arose in Louisiana when 
a number of citizens of New Orleans (including not 
only leading bankers and merchants but also, it is 
said, at least one ex-Governor of the State and one 
Judge), finding that a jury could not, because of terror- 
isation, be found to convict certain murderers, Italians 



American Politics in England 263 

and members of the Mafia, took the murderers out of 
gaol and hanged them in a public square in broad 
daylight. The Italian government demanded the pun- 
ishment of the lynchers, and the American govern- 
ment had to confess itself entirely unable to comply 
with the request. Whether it would have given the 
satisfaction if it could is another question ; but the 
dealing with the criminals was a matter solely for the 
Louisiana State authorities, and the Federal Govern- 
ment had no power to interfere with them or to dictate 
what they should do. The only way in which it 
could have obtained jurisdiction over the offenders 
would have been by sending Federal troops into the 
State to take them by force, a proceeding which the 
State of Louisiana would certainly have resisted by 
force, and civil war would have followed. Ultimately, 
the LTnited States, without acknowledging any liability 
in the matter, paid to the Italian government a certain 
sum of money as a voluntary solatium to the widows 
and families of those who had been killed, and the 
incident was closed. 

The second case, which has recently strained so 
seriously the relations between the United States and 
Japan, arose with the State of California, which re- 
fused to extend to Japanese subjects the privileges to 
which they are unquestionably entitled under the 
" most favoured nation " clause of the treaty between 
the two governments. It is a matter which cannot be 
dealt with fully here without too long a digression 
from the path of our present argument, and will be 
referred to later. It is enough for the present to point 
out that once again the National Government — or 
what we have called the Crown — has been seen to be 



264 The Twentieth Century American 

entirely incapable, without recourse to civil war, of 
compelling an individual State — or County — to respect 
the national word when pledged to a treaty with a 
foreign power. 1 

The States then, or Counties, are independent units, 
in each of which there exists a complete party or- 
ganisation of each of the great parties, which organisa- 
tions control the destinies of the parties within the 
County borders and have no concern whatever with 
the party fortunes outside. The great parties in the 
nation and in Parliament must look to the organisa- 
tions within the several Counties for their support and 
existence. The loss of a County, say Hampshire, by 
the local Conservative organisation will mean to the 
Conservative party in the nation not merely that the 
members to be elected to the lower house of Parliament 
by the Hampshire constituencies will be Liberal, but 
that the County Legislature will elect two Liberal Peers 
to the upper house as well; and it is likely that in 
one or other of the two houses parties may be so 
evenly balanced that the loss of the members from 
the one County may overthrow the government's 
working majority. Moreover, the loss of the County 
in the local County election will probably mean the 
loss of that County's vote at the next presidential elec- 
tion, which may result in the entire dethronement of 
the party from power. 

Wherefore it is obviously necessary that the party 

1 I trust that, because, for the purpose of making an illus- 
tration which will bring the matter home familiarly to English 
minds, I speak of the States as English Counties, I shall not be 
suspected of thinking (as some writers appear to have thought) 
that there is really any historical or structural analogy be- 
tween the two. 



American Politics in England 265 

as a whole — in the nation and in Congress — should do 
all that it can to help and strengthen the party leaders 
in the County. This it does in contests believed to be 
critical, and particularly just in advance of a national 
election, by contributing to the local campaign funds 
when a purely County (State) election is in progress 
(with which, of course, the national party ought 
theoretically to have nothing to do) and in divers 
other ways; but especially by judicious use of the 
national patronage in making appointments to office 
when the party is in power. 

The President — or let us say the Prime Minister — 
would rarely presume to appoint a postmaster at Win- 
chester or Petersfield, or a collector of the port of 
Portsmouth or Southampton, without the advice and 
consent of the Hampshire Peers or Senators. And the 
advice of the Hampshire Peers, we may be sure, would 
be shaped in accordance with their personal political 
interests or by considerations of the welfare of the 
party in the County. They would not be likely to 
recommend for preferment either a member of the 
opposite party or a member of their own party who 
was a personal opponent. Moreover, besides the ap- 
pointments in the County itself, there are many posts 
in the government offices in Whitehall, as well as a 
number of consulates and other more remote positions, 
to be filled. In spite of much that has been done to make 
the United States civil service independent of party 
politics, it remains that the bulk of these posts are nec- 
essarily still filled on recommendations made by the 
Congressmen or party leaders from the respective Coun- 
ties, and again it is the good of the party inside those 
Counties which inspires those recommendations. 



266 The Twentieth Century American 

Thus we see how the national party when in power 
is able to fatten and strengthen the hands of the 
party organisations within the several Counties; and 
strengthen them it must, for if they lose control of 
the voters within their territory then is the national 
party itself ruined and dethroned. 

And below the County party organisations, the 
County governments, are the organisations and govern- 
ments in the cities, which again are split on precisely the 
same lines of cleavage. The City Council of Peters- 
field or Midhurst is divided into Conservatives and 
Liberals precisely as the Hampshire Legislature or 
the Parliament at Westminster. Jealousies often arise 
between the County organisations and those in the 
cities. The influence of Birmingham might well be- 
come overpowering in the Warwickshire Legislature, 
whereby it would be difficult for any but a resident of 
Birmingham to become Governor of the County or to 
be elected to the House of Lords. If the Birmingham 
municipal organisation chanced to be controlled by a 
strong hand, it is not difficult to see how he might 
impose his will upon the County Legislature and the 
County party organisation, how he might claim more 
than his share of the sweets and spoils of office for his 
immediate friends and colleagues in the city, to the 
disgust of the other parts of the County. For the most 
part, however, such quarrels, between the city and 
County organisations of the same party, when they 
arise, are but lovers' quarrels, rarely pushed to the 
point of endangering the unity of the party in the 
State at election time. 

But now if we remember what was said at first, that 
no candidates for Parliament or other elected func- 



American Politics in England 267 

tionaries are " sent down " by a central organisation, 
but all are " sent up " from the bottom, the impulse 
starting from small meetings in public-house parlours 
and the like (in the case of cities, meetings being held 
by " precincts " to elect delegates to a meeting of the 
"ward," which meeting again elects delegates to the 
meeting of the city), when we see how the city can 
coerce the County and the County sway the nation, 
then we have also no difficulty in seeing how it is, as 
has been said already, that the same power that ap- 
points a janitor in a town-hall may dictate the nomina- 
tion of a President. Even more than the County 
organisation is to the national party, is the city organ- 
isation to the County. The party, both as a national 
and as a County organisation, must fatten and strengthen 
the hands of the city machine. Thus comes it that 
such an alderman as the Delectable One is unassailable. 
His power reaches far beyond the city. The party 
organisation in the city cannot dispense with him, 
because he can be relied upon always to carry his 
ward, and that ward may be necessary, not to the city 
machine only, but to the County and the nation. 

It is hardly necessary to explain that in a general 
election in England the party which is returned to 
power need not necessarily have a majority of the 
votes throughout the country. A party may win ten 
seats by majorities of less than a hundred in each and 
lose one, being therein in a minority of a thousand ; 
with the result that, with fewer votes than were 
cast for its opponents, it will have a clear majority 
of nine in the eleven seats. This is of course well 
understood. 

But in an American general or presidential election, 



268 The Twentieth Century American 

this anomaly is immensely aggravated by the fact 
that the electoral unit is not a city or a borough but 
a whole County or State. The various States have a 
voice in proportion to their population, but that vote 
is cast as a unit. A majority of ten votes in New 
York carries the entire thirty-seven votes of that State, 
while a majority of one thousand in Montana only 
counts three. There are forty-six States in the Ee- 
public, but the thirteen most populous possess more 
than half the votes, and a presidential candidate who 
received the votes of those thirteen, though each was 
won by only the narrowest majority, would be elected 
over an antagonist who carried the other thirty-three 
States, though in each of the thirty-three his majority 
might be overwhelming. Bearing this in mind, we see 
at once what immense importance may, in a doubtful 
election, attach to the control of a single populous State. 
If in an English election, similarly conducted, the 
country was known to be so equally divided that the 
vote of Warwickshire, with, perhaps, twenty votes, 
would certainly decide the issue, the man who could 
control Warwickshire would practically control the 
country. We have seen further, however, that the man 
who controls Warwickshire will probably be the 
man who controls Birmingham. He may be the Mayor 
of Birmingham, or, more likely, the chairman (or 
" boss ") of the municipal machine who nominated and 
elected the Mayor and whose puppet the Mayor prac- 
tically is. It then becomes evident that the man who 
can sway the politics of the nation is not merely the 
man who controls the single County of Warwickshire, 
but the man who, inside that County, controls the 
single city. 



American Politics in England 269 

To go a step below that again, the control of the 
city may depend entirely on the control of a given 
ward in the city. That ward may contain a very large 
labouring vote, by reason of the existence of a number 
of big factories within its limits. Unless that labour- 
ing vote can be polled for the Liberal party, the ward 
will not go Liberal, and without it the city will be 
lost. The loss of the city involves the loss of the 
County, and the loss of the County means the loss of 
the nation. The man therefore who by his personal 
influence, or by his leadership in a perfectly organised 
party machine in one ward of Birmingham, can be re- 
lied on to call out the full Liberal strength in that one 
ward of a single city may be absolutely indispensable 
to the success of the party in the country as a whole. 
And it is even conceivable that that man again may 
be dependent on one of his own henchmen, the " Cap- 
tain " of a single precinct in the ward or the man who 
has the ear and confidence of the hands in the largest 
of the factories. 

Let me not be understood as saying that the per- 
sonal influence of an individual may not be extremely 
powerful in an English election ; and that power may 
rest, similarly, on his popularity in, and consequent 
ability to carry with him into the party fold, one par- 
ticular district. But there is not the same established 
form of County government on avowedly national 
lines, nor the same city government, as in America, 
through which that influence can make itself definitely 
and continuously felt. 

We will state the situation in another way, which will 
make it clear to Englishmen from another point of view: 



270 The Twentieth Century American 

Let it be imagined that at the next general election 
in England, the decision is to be arrived at by a direct 
vote of the country as a whole for a Conservative or a 
Liberal Prime Minister. Instead of each County and 
borough electing its members of Parliament (they will 
do that only incidentally) the real struggle will take 
the form of a direct contest between two men. Each 
of the great parties will choose its own candidate, and 
the Conservatives have already nominated Mr. Bal- 
four. It remains for the Liberals to name their man 
who is to run against Mr. Balfour. The selection is to 
be made in a National Convention, to be held in Man- 
chester, at which each County will be represented by 
a number of delegates proportioned to its population. 
Those delegates have already been elected in each 
County by local meetings within the Counties them- 
selves, and in nearly every case the delegations so 
elected will come into the Convention Hall at Man- 
chester prepared to vote and act as a unit. Whether 
that has been arrived at by choice of the individual 
Counties when they elected their delegations or whether 
the Convention itself has decided the matter by adopt- 
ing the " unit rule " does not matter. The fact is that 
each county will be compelled to vote in a body, i. e., 
that if London has forty votes and Kent twenty, those 
forty votes or those twenty will have to be cast solidly 
for some one man. They cannot be split into thirty 
votes for one man and ten for another ; or into fifteen 
for one man and one each for five other men. 

The Convention meets and it is plain from the first 
that the two strongest candidates are Lord Eosebery 
and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. There are 
scattering votes for Mr, Morley and Mr. Asquith, each 



American Politics in England 271 

of them getting the vote of one or more small Counties. 
But after the first ballot, which is always more or less 
preliminary, it is apparent that neither of those gentle- 
men can hope to be chosen, so the Counties which 
voted for them, having expressed their preference, 
proceed on the next ballot to give their suffrages either 
to Lord Kosebery or to Sir Henry. The second bal- 
lot is completed. Every County has voted, with the 
result that (out of a total vote of 521, of which 261 are 
necessary for a choice) there are 248 votes for Lord 
Rosebery and 253 for Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
man. But there is still one County which has not 
voted for either. Kent at both ballots has cast its 
twenty votes for Mr. Will Crooks. The reason why 
Kent does this is because the representatives from 
Woolwich and the neighbourhood are a numerical 
majority of the Kent delegation and those men are 
devoted to Mr. Crooks. 

The third ballot produces the same result : Rose- 
bery 248 ; Bannerman, 253 ; Crooks, 20. The fourth, 
fifth, sixth, and seventh ballots show no change ex- 
cept that once in a while Rutland with three votes 
and Merioneth with four have amused themselves or 
caused a temporary flutter by swinging their votes 
from one side to the other or, perhaps, again casting 
them for Mr. Morley or Mr. Asquith. There is a 
deadlock. The Convention becomes impatient The 
evening wears on and midnight arrives and still there 
is no change. Neither Lord Rosebery nor Sir Henry 
can get the extra dozen votes that are needed : still 
with regularity when the name of Kent is called the 
leader of the delegation rises and responds " Kent 
casts twenty votes for William Crooks." 



272 The Twentieth Century American 

At last in the small hours of the morning something 
happens. How it has been arrived at nobody seems to 
know ; but when the roll is called for the thirteenth 
time, Norfolk, heretofore loyal to Sir Henry, suddenly 
votes for Crooks. Tremendous excitement follows. 
The word goes round that Campbell-Bannerman is 
beaten ; his friends have given up and it is useless to 
vote for him any longer. Meanwhile in the course of 
the evening feeling between the supporters of Sir 
Henry and the Roseberyites has grown so bitter that 
whatever the deserting Bannermanites do, they will 
not help to elect Lord Rosebery. Here and there a 
Scotch County remains firm to its leader, but Oxford 
swings off to Mr. Morley; Suffolk, amid yells that 
make it difficult to tell who the vote is cast for, follows 
Norfolk and plumps for Crooks. Sussex brings in 
Mr. Asquith again and Warwickshire goes for Crooks. 
Amid breathless silence the result of the thirteenth 
ballot is read out: Rosebery, 248 ; Crooks, 96 ; Morley, 
72 ; Asquith, 50 ; Bannerman, 43 ; etc. 

The fourteenth ballot begins. "Aberdeen ! " calls 
the Chairman. The head of the Aberdeen delegation 
stands up in a suspense so tense that it almost hurts. 
" Aberdeen casts seventeen votes for Mr. Will Crooks!" 
In an instant the whole hall is filled with maniacs. 
County after County rushes to range itself on the 
winning side. Before the roll is more than half com- 
pleted it is evident that Crooks must be chosen. 
Thereafter there is no dissentient voice. The ballot is 
interrupted by a voice which is known to belong to 
Lord Rosebery's personal representative. He moves 
that the nomination of Mr. Crooks be made unani- 
mous. In a din wherein no voice can be heard the 



American Politics in England 273 

erstwhile leader of the Bannermanite forces is seen wav- 
ing his arms and is known to be seconding the motion. 
In ten minutes the hall is singing God Save the King and 
Mr. Will Crooks is the chosen candidate of the Liberal 
party to oppose Mr. Balfour at the coming election. 

That is not materially different from what happened 
when Mr. Bryan was first nominated for the Presi- 
dency against Mr. McKinley — except that it did not 
take so long to accomplish. I have said that Mr. 
Bryan's nomination could have been defeated if a cer- 
tain local delegation had been "attended to " in advance. 
What |is to be noted is that Mr. Crooks has been nom- 
inated simply because he had a hold which could not be 
shaken on a small but compact body of men at Wool- 
wich. It is true that it is not often that so dramatic a 
thing would happen as the nomination of Mr. Crooks 
himself but more frequently an arrangement — a 
"trade" or "deal" — would be entered into by which 
in consideration of the Crooks vote being thrown to 
one or other of the leading candidates, in the event of 
the latter's defeating Mr. Balfour and being elected to 
the Premiership, certain political advantages, in the 
form of appointments to office and "patronage" gen- 
erally, would accrue, not necessarily to Mr. Crooks 
himself, but to his " machine," the citizens of Wool- 
wich, and the Liberal party in the County of Kent at 
large. We see here how the local " boss " may become 
all-powerful in national affairs (and this is of course 
only one of fifty ways) and how the interdependence 
of the party in the nation with the party organisation 
in the County or the municipality tends to the fatten- 
ing of the latter and, it must be added, the debauching 
of all three. 
18 



274 The Twentieth Century American 

At the last general election in England, in January, 
1906, there is no doubt that the Conservative party 
owed the loss of a large number of seats merely to the 
fact that it had been in office for so long, without se- 
rious conflict, that the local party organisations had not 
merely grown rusty but were practically defunct. In 
the United States the same thing, in anything like the 
same degree, would be impossible, because between 
the periods of the general elections (which themselves 
come every four years) come the State and municipal 
elections for the purposes of which the local party 
organisations are kept in continuous and more or less 
active existence. A State or a city may, of course, be 
so confirmedly Kepublican or Democratic that, even 
though elections be frequent, the ruling party organisa- 
tion will become, in a measure, soft and careless, but 
it can never sink altogether out of fighting condition. 
When a general election comes round, each great party 
in the nation possesses— or organises for the occasion 
— a national committee as well as a national cam- 
paign organisation ; but that committee and that 
national organisation co-operate with the local organ- 
isations in each State and city and it is the local organ- 
isations that really do the work — the same organisations 
as conduct the fight, in intermediate years, for the 
election of members to the State Legislature or of a 
mayor and aldermen. And each of those local organ- 
isations necessarily tends to come under the control 
of a recognised "boss." 

Let us see another of the fifty ways in which, as has 
been said, one of these local bosses may be all-power- 
ful in national affairs. A general election is approach- 
ing in Great Britain, and, as before, the Liberal party 



American Politics in England 275 

is in doubt whether to select as its candidate for the 
Premiership Lord Eosebery or Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman. The political complexion of almost every 
County is known and there is no chance of changing 
that complexion — a condition, be it said, which exists 
in America in the case of a large majority of the States. 
It is evident that at the coming election the vote is 
going to be extremely close, the most important of the 
"doubtful" Counties being Lanarkshire, which has 
25 votes ; which 25 votes will of course be governed 
by the course of the working population of Glasgow. 
Whichever party can secure Lanarkshire's vote will 
probably be successful ; so that the destiny of the 
country really depends on the temper of the labouring 
men of Glasgow. Glasgow has, let us suppose, a 
strong and well-organised local Liberal " machine " 
which carried the city at the last municipal election, 
so that the mayor and a large majority of the aldermen 
of Glasgow are Liberals to-day; and the dictator or 
" boss " of this machine is (we are merely using a name 
for the sake of illustration) Lord Inverclyde. Lord 
Inverclyde does not believe that Lord Eosebery is 
the right man for the Premiership. So he lets his 
views be known to the Liberal National Committee. 
"I am, as you know," he says, " a strong Liberal ; but 
frankly I would rather see Mr. Balfour made Prime 
Minister than Lord Eosebery. Glasgow will not vote 
for Lord Eosebery. The party can nominate any 
other man whom it pleases and we will elect him. I 
will undertake to carry Lanark for Sir Henry or Mr. 
Morley or anybody else; but I warn you that if Lord 
Eosebery is nominated, we will ' knife ' him " — that 
being the euphonious phrase used to describe the oper- 



276 The Twentieth Century American 

ation when a party leader or party machine turns against 
any particular candidate nominated by the party. 

What are the party leaders to do in such a case? 
To nominate Lord Rosebery after that warning (Lord 
Inverclyde is known to be a man of his word) will be 
merely to invite defeat at the election ; consequently, 
though he may be the actual preference of a large ma- 
jority of the Liberals of the country, Lord Eosebery 
does not get the nomination. It goes to some one who 
can carry Lanarkshire, — some one, that is, who is 
pleasing to the boss of the local machine of Glasgow. 
It would be not unlikely that the national leaders 
might resent the dictation of Lord Inverclyde and 
might (but not until after the election was safely over) 
start intriguing in Glasgow politics to have him de- 
throned from the position of local " boss," — might, in 
fact, begin " knifing " him in turn. Whether they 
would succeed in their object before another general 
election supervened would depend on the security of 
his hold on the local Liberal organisation ; and that 
would depend on his personal ability as a politician 
and — very largely — on his unscrupulousness. For it 
may, I think, be stated as an axiom that no man can 
long retain his hold as " boss " of the machine in a 
large city except by questionable methods, — methods 
which sometimes involve dishonesty. He must — no 
matter whether he likes it or not — use his patronage 
and his power to advance unworthy men ; and he must 
in some measure show leniency to certain forms of law- 
lessness. Otherwise the influence of the saloons, gam- 
blers, keepers of disorderly houses, and all the other 
non-law-abiding elements will be thrown against him 
with sufficient weight to work his downfall. 



American Politics in England 277 

Unscrupulousness and friendship with wickedness in 
the slums of a city may thus be the direct road to in- 
fluence in the councils of the national party. When 
it is remembered that not a few large cities, and there- 
fore some States, are practically controlled, through 
the balance of power, by voters of an alien nationality, 
it is further plain how such an alien vote may become 
a serious factor in the politics of the nation. Thus is 
the German element very strong in Milwaukee, and 
the Scandinavian element in the towns and State of 
Minnesota. Thus the Irish influence has been almost 
paramount in New York, though now outnumbered 
by Germans, Italians, and others ; and it is there, 
in New York, that the conditions which we have 
imagined in connection with Glasgow and Lord Inver- 
clyde are actually being almost exactly repeated in 
American Democratic politics as often as a general 
election comes round. 

You may frequently hear it said in America that 
" as goes New York, so goes the country " ; which is 
to say that in a presidential election the party which 
carries New York will carry the nation. In theory 
this is not necessarily so, although it is evident that 
New York's thirty-six votes in the electoral college 
must be an important contribution to the support of 
a candidate. In practice it has proven itself a good 
rule, partly by reason of the importance of those 
thirty-six votes, but more, perhaps, because the popu- 
lar impetus which sways one part of the country is 
likely to be felt in others — that, in fact, New York 
goes as the country goes. 

But let us assume that the New York vote is really 
essential to the election of a candidate — that the vote 



278 The Twentieth Century American 

in the country as a whole is evidently so evenly 
divided that whichever candidate can win New York 
must be elected the next President. Tammany Hall 
is a purely local organisation of the Democratic party 
in New York City. New York State, outside the 
city, is normally Republican, but many times the great 
Democratic majority in the Metropolitan district has 
swamped a Republican majority in the rest of the 
State. That Democratic vote in the Metropolitan dis- 
trict can only be properly "brought out" and con- 
trolled by Tammany ; so that the cordial support of 
Tammany Hall, though, as has been said, it is in real- 
ity a strictly local organisation, and as such is probably 
the worst and most corrupt organisation (as it is also 
the best managed) that has been built up in the coun- 
try, may be absolutely vital to the success of a Dem- 
ocratic presidential candidate. Tammany is practically 
an autocracy, the power of the Chief being almost 
absolute. England and English society have had some 
acquaintance with one Chief, and do not like him. 
But, as Chief of Tammany Hall, it is easy to see how 
even a coarse-grained Irishman may become for a time 
influential in American national affairs — even to the 
dictating of a nominee for the Presidency. 

I am not prepared to say that under the same condi- 
tions the same things could occur in England. What 
I am saying is that they do occur in the United States 
under conditions which do not exist in England ; and, 
while it may be that British civic virtue would be 
proof against the manifold temptations of a similar 
political system, we have no sufficient data to justify 
us in being sure of it, nor is it wise or charitable to as- 
sume that because a certain number of American poli- 



American Politics in England 279 

ticians yield to temptations which Englishmen have 
never experienced, therefore the people are of a less 
rigid virtue. Mr. Bryce has recorded his opinion that 
the mass of the public servants in America are no more 
corrupt than those in England. I prefer not to agree 
with him for, if it was true when he wrote it, the 
Americans to-day must be much the better, because 
since then there has unquestionably been an enormous 
improvement in the United States, while we have no 
evidence of a corresponding improvement in England. 
I believe, not only that many more public men are 
corrupt in America than in England, but that a larger 
proportion of the public men are corrupt, which, how- 
ever, need not imply a lower standard of political 
incorruptibility : only that there are much greater 
opportunities of going wrong. 

It is interesting to note, moreover, that in the public 
service the opportunities of malfeasance in public offi- 
cers in Great Britain are increasing rapidly and, more- 
over, in precisely those lines wherein they have proved 
most demoralising in America. I have elsewhere re- 
corded the apprehension with which many Englishmen 
cannot help regarding the closeness of the relations 
which are growing up between the national and 
local party organisations, but in addition to this the 
urban public bodies are coming to play a vastly larger 
role in the life of the people, while the multiplication 
of electric car lines and similar enterprises is exposing 
the members of those bodies to somewhat the same 
class of untoward influence as has so often proven 
fatal to the civic virtue of similar bodies in America. 
Whether, as a result, any large number of cases of 
individual frailty have exposed themselves, probably 



280 The Twentieth Century American 

only those immediately interested know ; the exposure 
at least has not reached the general public. 

It may not, however, be amiss to remember that a 
century and a half ago, when the conditions in the two 
countries were widely different from what they are 
to-day, Benjamin Franklin, coming to England, was 
shocked and astounded at the corruption then pre- 
valent in English public life. 

The procedure of an American presidential cam- 
paign has been sufficiently often described for the 
benefit of English readers. Suffice it to say that it is 
devastating, at times almost titanic. I have had some 
experience of the amenities of political campaigning in 
England, but the most bitterly contested fight in Eng- 
land never produces anything like the intensity of 
passion that is let loose in the quadrennial upheavals 
in the United States. 

It was my lot to be closely associated with the con- 
duct of a national campaign — as bitterly fought a 
campaign as the country has seen since the days of the 
war, — namely that of 1896 when Mr. Bryan was the 
candidate of the Free Silver Democracy. Early in 
the fight I began to receive abusive letters, for which 
a large and capacious drawer was provided in the 
office, into which they were tossed as they came, on 
the chance of their containing some reading which 
might be interesting when the trouble was over. As 
the fight waxed, they came by every post and in every 
form, ranging from mere incoherent personal abuse to 
threats of assassination. Hundreds of them were 
entirely insane : many hundred more the work, on the 
face of them, of anarchists pure and simple. A large 



American Politics in England 281 

proportion of them were written in red ink, and in 
many — very many — cases the passions of the writers 
had got so far beyond their control that you could see 
where they had broken their pens in the futile effort 
to make written words curse harder than they would. 
The receptacle in which they were placed was offi- 
cially known in the office as the Chamber of Horrors, 
but it was, I think, universally spoken of among the 
staff as the "Hell-box." Before the end of the cam- 
paign, capacious though it was, it was crowded to 
overflowing, and hardly a document that was not as 
venomous as human wrath could make it. Incident- 
ally I wish to say that never was a campaign — at least 
as far as my colleagues in our particular depart- 
ment were concerned — more purely in the interest of 
public morality, without any sort of selfish aims, and 
less deserving of abuse. What the correspondence 
of a presidential candidate himself must be in like 
circumstances, it is horrible to think. 1 

The intense feverishness of the campaign is of 
course increased by the vastness of the country, 
the tremendous distances over which the national 

1 None the less my friendly American critic (already quoted) 
holds, and remains firm in, the opinion that " however stren- 
uous the fighting, the political issues produce no such social 
changes or personal differences in the United States as have 
frequently obtained in England, say at the time of the lead- 
ership of Gladstone, or more recently in connection with 
the ' tariff reform ' of Chamberlain." It is his contention 
that Americans take their politics on the whole more good- 
humouredly than has always been found possible by their Eng- 
lish cousins, and that when the campaign is over, there is 
more readiness in the United States than in England to let pass 
into oblivion any bitterness that may have found expression 
during the fighting. 



282 The Twentieth Century American 

organisation has to endeavour to exercise control, and 
the immense diversity in the conditions of the people 
and communities to whom appeal has to be made. 
The voting takes place all over the country on the 
same day ; and it must be remembered that the area of 
the United States (not counting Alaska or any exter- 
nal dependencies) is so great that it reaches from west 
to east about as far as from London to Teheran, and 
north and south from London to below the southern 
boundary of Morocco. The difficulty of organisation 
over such an area can, perhaps, be imagined. In the 
course of the campaign there came in one day in my 
mail a letter written on a torn half of a railway 
time-card. It ran : 

" Dear Sir — There is sixty-five of us here working 
in a gravel pit and we was going to vote solid for 
Bryan and Free Silver. Some of your books [i. e., 
campaign leaflets, etc.] was thrown to us out of a 
passing train. We have organised a Club and will 
cast sixty-five votes for William McKinley. — Yours, 
etc." 

So far as those sixty -five were concerned our chief 
interest thereafter lay in seeing that the existence of 
that gravel-pit was never discovered by the enemy. 
A faith which had been so speedily and unanimously 
embraced might perhaps not have been unassailable. 

Before leaving this subject it may be well to say 
a few words on a recent election in New York which 
excited, perhaps, more interest in England than any 
American political event of late years. The eminence 
which Mr. Hearst has won is an entirely deplorable 
thing, which has been made possible by the fact, 



American Politics in England 283 

already sufficiently dwelt upon, that political power in 
the United States is so largely exerted from the bot- 
tom up. In their comments on the incident after the 
event, however, English papers missed some of its 
significance. Most English writers spoke of Mr. 
Hearst's appeal to the forces of discontent as a new 
phenomenon and drew therefrom grave inferences as 
to what would happen next in the United States. 
The fact is that the phenomenon is not new in any 
way. Mr. Hearst, in but a slightly different form, 
appealed to precisely the same passions as Mr. Bryan 
aroused — the same as every demagogue has appealed to 
throughout, at least, the northern and western sections 
of the country any time in this generation. Mr. 
Hearst began from the East and Mr. Bryan from the 
West, but in all essentials the appeal was the same. 
And Mr. Hearst was not elected. And Mr. Bryan 
was not elected. What will happen next will be that 
the next man who makes the same appeal will not be 
elected also. 

It is the allegory of the river and its ripples over 
again. Englishmen need not despair of the United 
States, for the great body of the people is extraordina- 
rily conservative and well-poised. In America, man 
never is, but always to be, cursed. Dreadful things 
are on the eve of happening, and never happen. There 
is a great saving fund of common-sense in the people 
— a sense which probably rests as much on the fact 
that they are as a whole conspicuously well-to-do as 
on anything else — which as the last resort shrinks 
from radicalism. In spite of the yellow press, in spite 
of all the Socialist and Anarchist talk, in spite of cor- 
ruption and brass bands and torchlight processions, 



284 The Twentieth Century American 

when the people as a whole is called upon to speak 
the final word, that word has never yet been wrong. 
Perhaps some day it will be, for all peoples go 
mad at times ; but the nation is normally sound and 
sane, with a sanity that is peculiarly like that of the 
English. 



CHAPTER XI 

SOME QUESTIONS OF THE MOMENT 

Sovereign States and the Federal Government — California 
and the Senate — The Constitutional Powers of Congress and 
the President — Government by Interpretation — President 
Roosevelt as an Inspiration to the People — A New Conception 
of the Presidential Office — "Teddy" and the " 'fraid strap" — 
Mr. Roosevelt and the Corporations — As a Politician — His Im- 
periousness — The Negro Problem — The Americanism of the 
South. 

It was said that it would be necessary to refer again 
to the subject of the relations of the General Govern- 
ment to the several States, as illustrated by the New 
Orleans incident and the treatment of the Japanese on 
the Pacific Coast ; and the first thing to be said is that 
no well-wisher of the United States living in Europe can 
help deploring the fact that the General Government 
has not the power to compel all parties to the Union 
to observe the treaties to which the faith of the nation 
as a whole has been pledged. It is a matter on which 
the apologist for the United States abroad has, when 
challenged, no defence. Few people in other countries 
do not consider the present situation unworthy of the 
United States ; and I believe that a large majority of 
the American people — certainly a majority of the 
people east of the Rocky Mountains — is of the same 
opinion. 

It is no excuse to urge that when another Power 
285 



286 The Twentieth Century American 

enters into treaty relations with the United States it 
does so with its eyes open and with a knowledge of the 
peculiarities of the American Constitution. This is 
an argument which belongs to the backwoods stage of 
American statesmanship. In the past, it is true, the 
United States has been in a measure the spoilt child 
among the nations and has been permitted to sit some- 
what loosely to the observance of those formalities 
which other Powers have recognised as binding; on 
themselves ; but the time has gone by when the United 
States can claim, or ought to be willing to accept, any 
especial indulgences. It cannot at once assert its right 
to rank as one of the Great Powers and affect to enter 
into treaties on equal terms with other nations, and at 
the same time admit that it is unable to honour its 
signature to those treaties. 

This, I say, is the general opinion of thinking men 
in other countries ; but, however desirable it may be 
that the General Government should have the power to 
compel the individual States to comply with the re- 
quirements of the national undertakings, it is diffi- 
cult, so long as the several States continue jealous of 
their sovereignty without regard to the national hon- 
our, to see how the end is to be arrived at. 

The first obvious fact is that all treaties are made by 
the President "by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate " and no treaty is valid until ratified by a 
vote of the Senate in which " two thirds of the Sena- 
tors present concur." The Senate occupies a peculiar 
position in the scheme of government. It does not 
represent either the nation as a whole nor, like the 
House of Eepresentatives, the people as a whole. The 
Senate represents the individual States each acting in 



Some Questions of the Moment 287 

its sovereign capacity ' ; and the voice of the Sen- 
ate is the voice of those States as separate entities. "When 
the Senate passes upon any question it has been passed 
upon by each several State and it is not easy to see 
how any particular State can claim to be exempt from 
the responsibility of any vote of the Senate as a whole. 

It would appear to follow of necessity that when the 
Senate has by a formal two-thirds vote ratified a treaty, 
every State is bound to accept all the obligations of 
that treaty, not merely as part of the nation but as a 
separate unit. The provision in the Constitution which 
makes the vote of the Senate on any treaty neces- 
sary can have no other intent than to bind the several 
States themselves. As a matter of historical accuracy 
it had no other intent when it was framed. 

In the particular case of the Japanese treaty, the 
time for the State of California to have made its atti- 
tude known was surely when the treaty passed the 
Senate. The California Senators, or the people of the 
State, had then two honest courses open to them. 
They could have let it be known unequivocally that 
they did not propose to hold themselves bound by the 
action of the Senate but would, if any attempt were 
made to force them to comply with the terms of the 
treaty, secede from the Union ; or they could have 
determined there and then to abide loyally by the 
terms of the treaty and no matter at what cost to the 
State, or at what sacrifice of their amour propre, to see 
that all the rights provided in the treaty were ac- 
corded to Japanese within the State. Either of these 

1 Mr. Bryce felicitously speaks of the Senate as " a sort of 
Congress of Ambassadors from the respective States" (The 
American Commonwealth, vol. 1., page 110). 



288 The Twentieth Century American 

courses would have been honest ; and Japanese who 
came to California would have come with their eyes 
open. The course which was followed, of allowing 
them to settle in the State in the expectation of receiv- 
ing that treatment to which the faith of the United 
States was pledged, and then denying them that treat- 
ment, was distinctly dishonest. 

If, however, the State of California, or any other in- 
dividual State, refuses to acknowledge the responsibil- 
ities which it has assumed by the vote of the Chamber 
of which its representatives are members, there appears 
no way in which the Federal Government can compel 
such acknowledgment except those of force and what 
the believers in the extreme doctrine of State Sover- 
eignty consider Constitutional Usurpation. 

It has in many cases been necessary as the con- 
ditions of the country have changed so to interpret the 
phrases of the Constitution as to give to the General 
Government powers which cannot have been contem- 
plated by the framers of that instrument. In this case 
there is every evidence, however, that the framers did 
intend that the General Government should have pre- 
cisely those powers which it now desires — or that the 
individual States should be subject to precisely those 
responsibilities which they now seek to evade — and if 
any sentence in the Constitution can be so interpreted 
as to give to the General Government the power to 
compel States to respect the treaties made by the 
nation, it seems unnecessary to shrink from putting 
such interpretation upon it. 

Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to 
" regulate commerce with foreign nations " — and com- 
merce is a term which has many meanings — as well as 



Some Questions of the Moment 289 

"to define and punish offences against the law of 
nations " and to " make all laws which shall be neces- 
sary for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." 
The President is invested with the power, " by and 
with the advice of the Senate, to make treaties," and he 
is charged with the duty of taking " care that the laws 
be faithfully executed." It would seem that among 
these provisions there is specific authority enough to 
cover the case, if the will to use that authority be 
there. And I believe that in a large majority of the 
people the will is there. 

It would appear to be competent for Congress to 
" define " any failure on the part of the citizens of any 
State to comply with whatever requirements in the 
treatment of foreigners may be imposed on them by a 
treaty into which the nation has entered, as an "offence 
against the law of nations." This power of " definition" 
on the part of Congress is quite unhampered. So also 
is the power "to make all laws which shall be neces- 
sary and proper for carrying into execution " the 
powers of definition and punishment. And it would 
be the duty of the President and the Federal Courts 
to take care that the laws were executed. 

If there would be any "usurpation" involved in 
such an interpretation of the phrases of the Constitution 
it is certainly less — much less, when regard is had to 
the intention of the framers of the Constitution — than 
other " usurpations " which have been effected, and 
sometimes without protest from the individual States; 
as, for instance, by the expansion of the right to 
regulate commerce between the several States into an 
authority to deal with all manner of details of the 
control of railways of which the framers of the Con- 



290 The Twentieth Century American 

stitution never contemplated the existence. It can- 
not even remotely be compared with such an extension 
of the Federal power as would be involved in the 
translation of the authority to " establish post-offices 
and post-roads" as empowering the government to 
take an even larger measure of control over those 
railroads than can be compassed under the right to 
regulate commerce — a translation which seems to have 
the approval of President Eoosevelt. 

Incidentally it may be remarked that it would be 
peculiarly interesting if, at this day, that authority to 
construct post-roads should thus be invoked to give 
the General Government new powers of wide scope, 
when we remember that it was this same provision of 
the Constitution which stood sponsor for the very 
earliest steps which, in the construction of the Cum- 
berland Road and other military or post routes, the 
young republic took in the path of practical federalism. 

To those Americans who received the cause of State 
Sovereignty as a trust from their fathers and grand- 
fathers before them, the cause doubtless appears a 
noble one; but to the outsider, unbiassed by such 
inherited sentiment, it seems evident, first, that the 
cause, however noble, is also hopeless; and, second, 
that it is unreasonable that in the forlorn effort to 
preserve one particular shred of a fabric already so 
tattered, the United States as a nation should be ex- 
posed to frequent dangers of friction with other Powers, 
and, what is more serious, should be made, once in 
every decade or so, to stand before the world in the 
position of a trader who repudiates his obligations. 

And if I seem to speak on what is after all a domes- 
tic subject with undue vehemence (as I cannot hope 



Some Questions of the Moment 291 

that I shall not seem to do to the minds of residents on 
the Pacific Coast), it is only because it is impossible 
for an earnest well-wisher of the United States living 
abroad not to feel acutely (while it does not seem 
to me that Americans at home are sensible) how 
much the country suffers in the estimate of other 
peoples by its present anomalous position. When two 
business concerns in the United States enter into any 
agreement, each assumes the other to be able to control 
its own agents and representatives, nor will it accept a 
plea of inability to control them as excuse for breach 
of contract. 

It may be that a select circle of the statesmen and 
foreign office officials in other countries are familiar 
with the intricacies of the American Constitution, but 
the masses of the people cannot be expected so to be, 
any more than the masses of the American people are 
adepts in the constitutions of those other countries. 
And it is, unfortunately, the masses which form and 
give expression to public opinion. In these days it is 
not by the diplomacies of ambassadors or the courte- 
sies of monarchs that friendships and enmities are 
created between nations. The feelings of one people 
towards another are shaped in curious and intangible 
ways by phrases, sentiments, ideas — often trivial in 
themselves — which pass current in the press or travel 
from mouth to mouth. It is a pity that the United 
States should in this particular expose itself to the 
contempt of lesser peoples, giving them excuse for 
speaking lightly of it as of a nation which does not 
keep faith. It does not conduce to increase the illumi- 
nating power of the example of America for the 
enlightenment of the world. 



292 The Twentieth Century American 

It might be well also if Americans would ask them- 
selves what they would do if a number of American 
citizens were subjected to outrage (whether they were 
murdered as in New Orleans, or merely forced to sub- 
mit to indignities and inconvenience as in California) in 
some South American republic, which put forward the 
plea that under its constitution it was unable to con- 
trol the people or coerce the administration of the 
particular province in which the offences were com- 
mitted. Would the United States accept the plea? 
Or if the outrages were perpetrated in one of the self- 
governing colonies of Great Britain and the British 
Government repudiated liability in the matter? The 
United States, if I understand the people at all, 
would not hesitate to have recourse to force to en- 
deavour to compel Great Britain to acknowledge her 
responsibility. 

In the matter of the relation of the general govern- 
ment to the several States the most important factor to 
be considered at the present moment is undoubtedly 
the personality of President Roosevelt, and any at- 
tempt to make intelligible the change which has come 
over the United States of recent years would be futile 
without some recognition of the part which he has 
played therein. Mr. Roosevelt has been credited with 
being the author of "a revival of the sense of civic 
virtue " in the American people. Certainly he has 
been, by his example, a powerful agent in directing 
into channels of reform the exuberant energy and en- 
thusiasm which have inspired the people since the 
great increase in material prosperity and the physical 
unification of the country bred in it its quickened 
sense of national life. In the period of activity and 



Some Questions of the Moment 293 

expansiveness — one is almost tempted to say explosive- 
ness — which followed the Cuban war, such a man was 
needed to guide at least a part of the national energy 
into paths of wholesome self-criticism and reformation. 
He set before the youth of the country ideals of patriot- 
ism and of civic rectitude which were none the less 
inspiring because easily intelligible and even common- 
place. 1 The ideals have, it is true, since then, perhaps 
inevitably and surely not by his will, been dragged 
about in the none too clean mud of party politics ; but 
the impetus which he gave, before his single voice be- 
came largely drowned in the factional hubbub around 
him, endures and will endure. Whatever comes, the 
American people is a different people and a better 
people for his preaching and example. 

Moreover, what touches the question of State sover- 
eignty nearly, he has given a new character to the 
Presidential office. I have expressed elsewhere my 
belief that the process of the federalising of the country, 
the concentration of power in the central government, 
must proceed further than it has yet gone; but it is 
difficult now to measure, what history will see clearly 
enough, how much Mr. Roosevelt has contributed to 
the hastening of the process. No President, one is 
tempted to say since Washington, but certainly since 

> " He stands for the commonplace virtues ; he is great along 
lines on which each one of us can be great if he wills and 
dares" (Theodore Roosevelt, the Man and Citizen, by Jacob A. 
Riis). Mr. Roosevelt has spoken of himself as " a very ordin- 
ary man." A pleasant story is told by Mr. Riis of the lady who 
said : " I have always wanted to make Roosevelt out a hero, 
but somehow, every time he did something that seemed really 
great, it turned out, upon looking at it closely, that it was only 
just the right thing to do." 



294 The Twentieth Century American 

Lincoln, has had anything like the same conception of 
the Presidential functions as Mr. Roosevelt, coupled 
with the courage to insist upon the acceptance of that 
conception by the country. Whether for good or ill 
the office of President must always stand for more, 
reckoned as a force in the national concerns, than it did 
before it was occupied by Mr. Eoosevelt. A weak 
President may fail to hold anything like Mr. Roose- 
velt's authority ; but the office must for a long time at 
least be more authoritative, and I think more honour- 
able, for the work which he has done in it. 

I first came in contact with Mr. Roosevelt some 
twenty-five years ago, when his personality already 
pervaded the country from the Bad Lands of Dakota 
to the Rocky Mountains. I had a great desire to meet 
this person about whom, not only in his early life but, 
as it were, in his very presence, myth was already 
clustering, — a desire which was almost immediately 
gratified by chance, — but the particular detail about 
him which at the time made most impression on my 
mind was that he was the reputed inventor of the 
" 'fraid strap." The " 'fraid strap" is — or was — a 
short thong, perhaps two feet in length, fastened to the 
front of the clumsy saddle, which, at signs of contum- 
acy in one's pony, one could, with a couple of hitches, 
wrap round his hand, in such a way as to increase im- 
mensely the chance of a continuity of connection with 
his seat. The pony of the Plains in those days was 
not as a rule a gentle beast, and I was moved to grati- 
tude to the inventor of the " 'fraid strap " — though 
whether it was really Mr. Roosevelt's idea or not it is 
(without confession from himself) impossible to guess, 



Some Questions of the Moment 295 

for, as I have said, he was already, though present 
almost a half- mythical person to the men of the 
north-western prairie country. 

What vexed me no little at the time was that it was 
with some effort that I could get his name right. I 
could not remember whether it was Teddy Eoosevelt 
or Roosy Teddevelt. The name now is familiar to all 
the world ; but then it struck strangely on untrained 
English ears and to me it seemed quite as reasonable 
whichever way one twisted it round. Mr. Jacob Riis 
(or Mr. Leupp) has protested against the President of 
the United States being called "Teddy" and we 
have his word for it that Mr. Roosevelt's own intimates 
have never thought of addressing him otherwise than 
as "Theodore." Doubtless this is correct (certainly 
I know men who assure me that they call him 
" Theodore " now) but at least the more friendly 
" Teddy " has, as is proved by that confusion in my 
mind of a quarter of a century ago, the justification 
of long prescription. Nor am I sure that it has not 
been a fortunate thing both for Mr. Roosevelt and the 
country that his name has been Teddy to the multi- 
tude. I doubt if the men of the West, the rough-riders 
and the plainsmen, would give so much of their hearts 
to Theodore. 

It is not easy to estimate the value, or otherwise, of 
Mr. Roosevelt's work in that capacity in which he has 
of late come to be best known to the world, namely as 
an opponent of the Trusts ; but it is a pity that so 
many English newspapers habitually represent him as 
an enemy of all concentrated wealth. He has been 
called "the first Aristocrat to be elected President." 
Whether that be strictly true or not, he belongs 



296 The Twentieth Century American 

distinctly to the aristocratic class and his sympathies 
are naturally with that class. His instincts are not de- 
structive. No one, I have reason to believe, has a 
shrewder estimate of the worthlessness of the majority 
of those politicians who use his name as a cloak for 
their attacks on all accumulated wealth than he. It is 
only necessary to read his speeches to see how con- 
stantly he has insisted that it is not wealth, but the 
abuse of it, which he antagonises : " We draw the line 
not against wealth, but against misconduct.'' He has 
many times protested against the " outcry against men 
of wealth," for most of which he has declared " there is 
but the scantiest justification." Again and again he 
has proclaimed his desire not to hurt the honest cor- 
poration, " but we need not be over-tender about sparing 
the dishonest." ' 

One of the chief difficulties in the practical applica- 
tion of his policies has been that the Government 
cannot have the power to punish dishonest corporations 
without first being entrusted with a measure of control 
over all corporate operations, the concession of which 
control the honest corporations have felt compelled to 
resist. Nor is it possible to say that their resistance 
has not been justified. However wisely and forbear- 
ingly Mr. Roosevelt himself might use whatever power 
was placed in his hands, there has been little in the 
experience of the corporations in America to make 
them believe that they can trust either office-holders 
in general or, for any long term, the Government itself. 
Dispassionate students of the railway problem in the 
United States are aware that there is nothing which 

1 See his Addresses and Presidential Messages, with an 
introduction by Henry Cabot Lodge (Putnams, 1904). 



Some Questions of the Moment 297 

the corporations have done to the injury of the public 
worse than the wanton and gratuitous injuries which 
have been done by the politicians, by the State govern- 
ments, and even on occasions by the Federal Government 
itself, to the corporations. If particular railway com- 
panies have at times abused the power of which they 
were possessed as monopolising the transportation to and 
from a certain section of the country, that abuse has 
not excelled in wantonness and immorality the abuses 
of their power over the corporations of which several 
of the Western States have been systematically guilty. 
There has been little encouragement to the corporations 
to submit themselves to any larger measure of public 
control than has been necessary ; and the lessons of the 
past have shown that it would be injudicious for the 
railways to surrender uncomplainingly to the State 
governments authority which the British companies 
can leave to the Board of Trade without misgiving. 
And there was a time when the national Interstate 
Commerce Commission was, if more honest, not much 
less prejudiced in its dealing with the corporations 
subject to its authority than were the governments or 
railway commissions of the individual States. 

Mr. Eoosevelt's desire may have been (as it is) only 
to protect the people against the misuse of their power 
by dishonest corporations ; and the honest corporations 
would be no less glad than Mr. Koosevelt himself to 
see the dishonest brought to book. But in the neces- 
sity of resisting (or what has seemed to the corporations 
the necessity of resisting) the extensions of the federal 
power which were requisite before reform could be 
achieved, the honest have been compelled to make 
common cause with the dishonest, so that the President 



298 The Twentieth Century American 

has, in particular details, been forced into an attitude of 
hostility towards all corporations (and the corporations 
have for the most part been forced to put themselves 
in an attitude of antagonism to him) in spite of their 
natural sympathies and common interests. 

The result has been unfortunate for business interests 
generally because the mere fact that the President was 
" against the companies " (no matter on what grounds, 
or whether he was against them all or only against 
some) has encouraged throughout the country the anti- 
corporation feeling which needed no encouragement. 
Any time these forty years, or since the early days of 
the Granger agitation, the shortest road to notoriety and 
political advancement (at least in any of the Western 
States) has been by abuse of the railroad companies. 
A thousand politicians and newspapers all over the 
country are eager to seize on any phrase or pronounce- 
ment of the President which can be interpreted as 
giving countenance to the particular anti-railroad cam- 
paign at the moment in progress in their own locality. 
A vast number of people are interested in distorting, 
or in interpreting partially, whatever is said at the 
White House, so that any phrase, regardless of its con- 
text, — each individual act, without reference to its 
conditions, — which could be represented as an en- 
couragement to the anti-capitalist crusade has been 
seized upon and made the most of. All over the West 
there have always, in this generation, been a sufficient 
number of persons only too anxious, for selfish reasons, 
to inflame hostility against the railroad companies or 
against men of wealth ; but only within the last few 
years has it been possible for the most unscrupulous 
demagogue to find colour and justification for whatever 



Some Questions of the Moment 299 

he has chosen to preach in the example and precept of 
the President — and of a President whose example and 
precept have counted for more with the masses of the 
people than have those of any occupant of the White 
House since the war. In this way Mr. Roosevelt has 
done more harm than could have been accomplished 
by a much worse man. 

If the corporations have suffered, the course of events 
has been unfortunate too for Mr. Roosevelt. No one 
is better aware than he of the misrepresentation to 
which he is subjected and the unscrupulous use which is 
made of his example ; and it is impossible that at times 
it can fail to be very bitter. It must also be bitter to 
find arrayed against him many men whose friendship 
he must value and whose co-operation in his work it 
must seem to him that he ought to have. It happens 
that his is not a character which is swayed by such con- 
siderations one hair's breadth from the course which he 
has marked out for himself ; but it is deplorable that 
a very large proportion of precisely that class of men 
in which Mr. Roosevelt ought (or at least is justified 
in thinking that he ought) to find his strongest allies 
have felt themselves compelled to become his most de- 
termined opponents, while those interests which ought 
(or at least are justified in thinking that they ought) to 
to find in Mr. Roosevelt, as the occupant of the White 
House, their strongest bulwark against an unreasoning 
popular hostility only see that that hostility is im- 
mensely inflamed and strengthened by his course and 
example. The conditions are injurious to the business 
interests of the country and weaken Mr. Roosevelt's 
influence for good. 

Yet it seems impossible — or certainly impossible for 



300 The Twentieth Century American 

one on the outside — to place the responsibility any- 
where except on those general conditions of the country 
which make possible both the misrepresentation of the 
position of the President and the wide-spread hostility 
to the corporations, or on those laxities in political and 
commercial morality in the past which have put it in 
the power alternately of the politician to plunder the 
railways and the railways to prey upon the people. In 
the ill-regulated conditions of the days of ferment there 
grew up abuses, both in politics and in commerce, which 
can only be rooted out with much wrenching of old 
ties and tearing of the roots of things ; but it is worth 
an Englishman's understanding that the fact that this 
wrenching and this tearing are now in progress is only 
an evidence of that effort at self-improvement, an effort 
determined and conscious, which, as we have already 
seen more than once, the American people is making. 
Whatever certain sections of the American press, cer- 
tain politicians, or certain financial interests, may 
desire the world to think, there is no need for those at 
a distance to see in the present conflict evidence either 
of a wicked and radically destructive disposition in the 
President or of an approaching disintegration of the 
American commercial fabric. 

Meanwhile, as has been said, one result has been to 
weaken Mr. Eoosevelt's personal influence for good. 
I have been assured by men of undoubted truthfulness, 
who are at the head of large financial interests, that he 
has, in the last few years, become as tricky and un- 
scrupulous in his political methods as the oldest polit- 
ical campaigner ; a statement which I believe to be 
entirely mistaken. " Practical politics, " said Mr. 
Roosevelt once, " is not dirty politics. On the con- 



Some Questions of the Moment 301 

trary in the long run the politics of fraud and treachery- 
is unpractical politics, and the most practical of all 
politicians is the one who is clean and decent and up- 
right." There is no evidence which I have been able 
to find that Mr. Koosevelt does not now believe this as 
thoroughly and act upon it as consistently as when 
he first entered the New York State Legislature. 

A more reasonable accusation against him, which is 
made by many of his best friends, is that his imperious 
will and his confidence in his own opinions make him 
at times unjust and intolerant in his judgment of others. 
There have been occasions when he has seemed over- 
ready to accuse others of bad faith without other ground 
than his own opinion or the recollection of what has 
occurred at an interview. He may have been right ; 
but it is certain that he has alienated the friendship of 
not a few good men by the vehemence and positiveness 
with which he has asserted his views. And anything, 
independent of all questions of party, which weakens 
his influence is, for the country's sake, a thing to be 
deplored. 

The negro question has contributed not a little to 
Mr. Roosevelt's difficulties, as it has to the misunder- 
standing of the American people in England. I 
know intelligent Englishmen who have visited the 
United States and honestly believe that in the not very 
distant future the country will again be torn with civil 
war, a war of black against white, which will imperil 
the permanence of the Republic no less seriously than 
did the former struggle. I do not think that the appre- 
hension is shared by many intelligent Americans. 

It is perhaps inevitable that Americans should 



302 The Twentieth Century American 

frequently be irritated by the tone of the comments in 
English papers on the lynchings of negroes which 
occur in the South. Some of these incidents are bar- 
barous and disgraceful beyond any possibility of pallia- 
tion, but it is certain that if Englishmen understood 
the conditions in the South better they would also 
understand that in some cases it is extremely difficult 
to blame the lynchers. Many of those people who in 
London (or in Boston) are loudest in condemnation of 
outrages upon the negro would if they lived in certain 
sections of the South not only sympathise with but 
participate in the unlawful proceedings. 

It has already been mentioned that among the men 
in New Orleans who assisted at the summary execu- 
tion of the Italian Mafiotes there were, it is believed, 
an ex-Governor of the State and a Judge : men, that is 
to say, as civilised and of as humane sentiments as the 
members of any club in Pall Mall. They were not 
bloodthirsty ruffians, but gentlemen who did what they 
did from a stern sense of necessity. It has been my 
lot to live for a while in a community in which the 
maintenance of law and order depended entirely on a 
self -constituted Vigilance Committee ; and the opera- 
tions of that committee were not only salutary but 
necessary. It has also been my lot to live in a com- 
munity where the upholders of law and order were not 
strong enough to organise a Vigilance Committee. I 
have been one of three or four who behind closed doors 
earnestly canvassed the possibilities of forming such 
an organisation, and neither I nor any of the others 
(among whom I remember were included one attorney - 
at-law and one mining engineer and surveyor) would 
have hesitated to serve on such a committee could it 



Some Questions of the Moment 303 

have been made of sufficient strength to achieve any 
useful purpose, but the disparity between our num- 
bers and those of the " bad men " who at that time 
controlled the community was too obvious to give us 
any hope of being able to enforce our authority. There 
may, therefore, be conditions of society infinitely worse 
than those where order is preserved by lynch law ; and 
I make no doubt that neither I myself nor any fellow- 
member of my London Club would, if living in one of 
the bad black districts of the South, act otherwise than 
do the Southern whites who live there now. 

What is deplorable is not the spirit which prompts 
the acts of summary justice (lam speaking only of one 
class of Southern " outrage ") but the conditions which 
make the perpetration of those acts the only practic- 
able way of rendering life livable for white people ; and 
for the responsibility for these conditions we must go 
back either to the institution of slavery itself (for 
which it should be remembered that England was to 
blame) or to the follies and passions of half a century 
ago which gave the negro the suffrage and put him on 
a plane of political equality with his late masters. ' If, 
since then, the problem has grown more, rather than 
less, difficult, it has not been so much by the fault of 
the Southern white, living under conditions in which 
only one line of conduct has been open to him, as of 
Northern philanthropists and negro sympathisers who 

1 To those who would understand the negro question and the 
mistakes of the people of the North during the Reconstruction 
period (to which the present genei'ation owes the legacy of the 
problem in its acute form) I commend the reading of Mr. James 
Ford Rhodes's History of the United States from the Com- 
promise of 1850 to the Restoration of Home Rule in the South 
in 1877 (Macmillan). 



304 The Twentieth Century American 

have helped to keep alive in the breasts of the coloured 
population ideas and ambitions which, can never be 
realised. 

The people of the North have of late years come to 
understand the South better, and whereas what I have 
said above would, twenty years ago, have found few 
sympathisers in any Northern city, I believe that to-day 
it expresses the opinion of the large majority of North- 
ern men. I also believe that the necessary majority 
could be secured to repeal so much of the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution as 
would be necessary to undo the mistake which has been 
committed. It is true that in some Southern States 
the majority of the blacks are practically disfranchised 
now ; but it would remove a constant cause of friction 
and of political chicanery if the fact were recognised 
frankly that it is not possible to contemplate the 
possibility of the negro ever becoming the politically 
dominant race in any community where white people 
live. There is no reason to believe that the two races 
cannot live together comfortably even though the blacks 
be in a large majority, but there must be no question 
of white control of the local government and of the 
machinery of justice. 

Taking away the franchise from the negro would 
not, of course, put an end to many of the social diffi- 
culties of the situation, but, the present false relations 
between the two being abolished, those difficulties are 
no more than have to be dealt with in every community. 
There would be a chance for the negroes as a race to 
develop into useful members of the community, as 
negroes, filling the stations of negroes and doing 
negroes' work, along such lines as those on which Mr. 



Some Questions of the Moment 305 

Booker Washington is working. The English have 
had a wide experience of native races in all parts of 
the world and they have not yet found the problem of 
living with them and of holding at least their respect, 
together with some measure of their active good-will, 
anywhere insoluble. To an. Englishman it does not 
seem that it should be insoluble in the United States. 
He is rather inclined to think that the rapidity with 
which the negro of the South would work out his 
economic salvation, if once the political difficulty were 
removed, would depend chiefly on the ability of the 
race to produce a continuity of men like Mr. Booker 
Washington, with, perhaps, the concurrent ability of 
the north to produce men (shall I say, like the late 
W. H. Baldwin ?) to co-operate with the leaders and 
teachers of the blacks and to interpret them and their 
work to the country. 

The Englishman in England is chiefly impressed by 
the stories of Southern outrages upon the blacks and 
he gets therefrom an erroneous idea of the character of 
the Southern white. An Englishman who studies the 
situation on the spot is likely to acquire great sympathy 
with the Southern white and to condemn only the 
political ineptitude which has made the existing con- 
ditions possible. 

Whether Mr. Roosevelt's course has been the one 
best adapted to facilitate a solution of the difficulties it 
would be idle to enquire. The laws being as they are, 
and he being the kind of man he is and, as President, 
entrusted with the duty of seeing that the laws are 
faithfully executed, he could not have taken a different 
line. Another man (and an equally good man) might 
have refrained from making one or two of his appoint- 



306 The Twentieth Century American 

merits and from entertaining Mr. Washington at the 
White House. But if Mr. Roosevelt did not do pre- 
cisely those things, he would not do fifty other of the 
things which have most endeared him to the people. 

In this connection, it may be that there will be 
readers who will think that in many things which I 
say, when generalising about the American people as a 
whole, I fail to take into proper account the South and 
characteristics of such of the people of the South as are 
distinctively Southern. It is not from any lack of 
acquaintance with the South ; still less from any lack of 
admiration of or affection for it. But what has been 
said of New York may in a way be said of the South, 
for whatever therein is typically Southern to-day is not 
typically American ; and all that is typically Southern 
is moreover rapidly disappearing. In the tremendous 
activity of the new national life which has been infused 
into the country as a result of its solidification and 
knitting together of the last thirty years, there is no 
longer room for sectional divergences of character. 
They are overwhelmed, absorbed, obliterated ; and the 
really vital parts of the South are no longer Southern 
but American. What has the spirit of Atlanta in 
Georgia, of Birmingham in Alabama, of any town in 
the South-west, from St. Louis to Galveston, to do with 
the typical spirit of the South? However strong 
Southern sentiment may still be, what is there of the 
Southern spirit even in Richmond or in Louisville? 
I need hardly say that America produces no finer men 
than the best Virginian or the best Kentuckian, but, 
with all his Southern love and his hot rhetoric, the 
man of this generation who is a leader among his 



Some Questions of the Moment 307 

fellows in Kentucky or in Virginia is so by virtue of 
the American spirit that is in him and not by virtue 
of any of the dying spirit of the old South. 



CHAPTER XII 
Commercial Morality 

Are Americans more Honest than Englishmen? — An Amer- 
ican Peerage — Senators and other Aristocrats — Trade and the 
British Upper Classes — Two Views of a Business Career — 
America's Wild Oats — The Packing House Scandals—" Amer- 
ican Methods" in Business — A Countryman and Some Eggs — 
A New Dog — The Morals of British Peers — A Contract of 
Mutual Confidence — Embalmed Beef, Re-mounts, and War 
Stores — The Yellow Press and Mr. Hearst — American View 
of the House of Lords. 

It would seem to be inevitable that any general 
diffusion of corruption in political circles should act 
deleteriously on the morals of the whole community. 
It will therefore seem almost absurd to Englishmen to 
question whether on the whole the code of commercial 
ethics in America — the standard of morals which pre- 
vails in the e very-day transaction of business — is higher 
or lower than that which prevails in Great Britain. The 
answer must be almost a matter of course. But, setting 
aside any expression of individual opinion and all pre- 
conceived ideas based on personal experience, let us 
look at the situation and see, if we can, what, judging 
only from the circumstances of the two countries, would 
be likely to be the relative conditions evolved in each. 
To do this it will be necessary first to clear away a 
common misapprehension in the minds of Englishmen. 

308 



Commercial Morality 309 

It is somehow generally assumed — for the most part 
unconsciously and without any formulation of the 
notion in the individual mind — that American society 
is a sort of truncated pyramid : that it is cut off short 
— stops in mid-air — before it gets to the top. Because 
there are no titles in the United States, therefore there 
are no Upper Classes ; because there is no Aristocracy 
therefore there is nothing that corresponds to the indi- 
vidual Aristocrat. 1 If there were a peerage in the 
United States, the country would have its full comple- 
ment of Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, and the 
rest. And — this is the point — they would be precisely 
the same men as lead America to-day ; — but how dif- 
ferently Englishmen would regard them ! 

The middle-class Englishman, when he says that he 
is no respecter of titles and declares that it does not 
make any difference to him whether a man be a Lord 
or not, may think he is speaking the truth. It is even 
conceivable that there are some so happily constituted 
as to be able to chat equally unconcernedly with a 
Duke and with their wife's cousin, the land agent. 
Such men, I presume, exist in the British middle 

1 It is delightful to find, some weeks after this was written, 
that Mr. Wells makes precisely this common blunder and states 
it in almost the exact words that I have used later on. His ex- 
cuse lies in the fact that, as he says, he had it "in his mind 
before ever he crossed the Atlantic" ; but that hardly excuses his 
failure to disabuse himself after he was across. Most curious is 
it that Mr. Wells appears to think that this erroneous notion 
is a discovery of his own and he enlarges on it and expounds it 
at some length ; the truth being, as I say above, that it is the 
common opinion of all uninformed Englishmen. Mr. Wells is 
in fact voicing an almost universal — even if unformulated — 
national prejudice, but it is a pity that he took it over to 
America and brought it back again. 



310 The Twentieth Century American 

classes. But the fact remains that in the mass and, 
as it were, at a distance the effect of titles on the 
imagination of the British people is extraordinarily 
powerful. 

That the men in America are precisely the same men, 
though they have no titles, as they would be if they 
had, is best shown by the example of Americans who 
have crossed the Canadian border. If Sir William Van 
Home had not gone to Canada in 1881 or thereabouts, 
he would still be plain " Bill " Van Home and just as 
wonderful a man as he is to-day. On the other hand 
if fortune had happened to place Mr. James J. Hill a 
little farther north — in Winnipeg instead of in St. 
Paul — it is just as certain that he would to-day be 
Lord Manitoba (or some such title) as that his early 
associates George Stephen and Donald Smith are now 
Lord Mount Stephen and Lord Strathcona and Mount 
Boyal. But somehow — it were useless to deny it — 
Englishmen would think of him as quite a different 
man. Mr. C. M. Hays in Montreal is still what he was 
in St. Louis — Charlie Hays. He will not change his 
nature when he becomes Lord Muskoka. 

And what is true of a few individuals is no less true 
all over the United States. In the immediate neighbour- 
hood of Mr. Hill, there should be at least one peerage 
in the Washburn family and a couple of baronetcies 
among the Pillsburys. Chicago would have of course 
one Duke in the head of the McCormick family, Mr. 
Marshall Field would have died Earl Dearborn, and 
Mr. Hughitt might be Viscount Calumet. In New 
York Lord Waldorf would be the title of the eldest 
son of the (at present third) Duke of Astoria. The 
Vanderbilt marquisate — of Hudson probably — would 



Commercial Morality 311 

be a generation more recent. So throughout the coun- 
try, from Maine to Mississippi, from Lord Penobscot 
to the Marquis of Biloxi, there would be a peerage 
in each of the good old houses — the Adamses, the 
Cabots, and the Quincys, the Livingstons, the Putnams, 
and Stuyvesants, the Carters and Randolphs and 
Jeffersons and Lees. 

Americans will say : " Thank Heaven and the wis- 
dom of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers that it is not so!" 
If it were so, however, a good deal of British misunder- 
standing of the United States would be removed. Nor 
will it be contended that any of the Americans whom 
Englishmen have known best — Mr. Bayard, Mr. 
Lowell, Mr. Choate, or Mr. Whitelaw Reid, or Gen. 
eral Horace Porter — would be other than ornaments to 
any aristocracy in the world. It would be idle to en- 
quire whether Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. 
Cleveland or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. 
Root or Lord Rosebery, Mr. Olney or Sir Edward 
Grey were the better man, for every Englishman will 
probably at once concede that the United States does 
somehow manage to produce individuals of as fine a 
type as England herself. But what no Englishman 
confesses in his heart is that there is any class of these 
men — that there is as good an upper stratum to society 
there as in England. These remarkable individuals 
can only be explained as being what naturalists call a 
" sport " — mere freaks and accidents. This idea exists 
in the English mind solely, I believe, from the lack of 
titles in America; which is because the colonists 
were inspired by Anglo-Saxon and not by Norman 
ideas. Had Englishmen been accustomed for a gener- 
ation or two to have relations, diplomatic and com- 



312 The Twentieth Century American 

mercial, not with Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, but with 
Lord Savannah and the Earl of Chicopee, the idea 
would never have taken root. And if Englishmen 
knew the United States better, they would be aston- 
ished to find how frequent these " sports " and accidents 
seem to be. And it must be remembered that the 
country does at least produce excellent Duchesses and 
Countesses in not inadequate numbers. 

Because American society is not officially stratified 
like a medicine glass and there is, ostensibly at least, 
no social hierarchy, Englishmen would do well to dis- 
abuse themselves of the idea that therefore the people 
consists entirely of the lower middle class, with a layer 
of unassimilated foreign anarchists below and a few 
native and accidental geniuses thrusting themselves 
above. Democracy, at least in the United States, is 
not nearly so thorough a leveller as at a first glance it 
appears. You will, it is true, often hear in America 
the statement that it is "four generations from shirt- 
sleeves to shirt-sleeves," which is to say that one 
man, from the farm or the workshop, builds up a fortune ; 
his son, being born in the days of little things and bred 
in the school of thrift, holds it together ; but his sons 
in turn, surrounded from their childhood with wealth 
and luxury, have lost the old stern fibre and they slip 
quickly back down the steep path which their grand- 
father climbed with so much toil. But no less often 
will you hear the statement that " blood will tell." 

In a democracy the essential principle of which is 
that every man shall have an equal chance of getting 
to the top, it is a matter of course that that top stratum 
will be constantly changing. The idea of anything 
in the nature of an hereditary privileged class is 



Commercial Morality 313 

abhorrent to the mind of every good American. If he 
had to have an official Aristocracy, he would insist on 
a brand new one with each generation ; or more likely 
that it should be re-elected every four years. We are 
not now discussing the advantages or disadvantages 
of the hereditary principle; the point that I desire to 
make is that at any given time American society, in- 
stead of being truncated and headless, has the equiv- 
alent of an aristocracy, whether in the first, second, 
third, or fifth generation of nobility, just as abundant 
and complete as if it were properly labelled and classi- 
fied into Dukes, Marquises, Viscounts, and the rest. 
And this aristocracy is quite independent of any social 
cachet, whether of the New York Four Hundred or of 
any other authority. 

It is a commonly accepted maxim among thoughtful 
Americans that the United States Senate is as much 
superior to the House of Lords as the House of 
Representatives is inferior to the House of Commons. 
One may, or may not, agree with that dictum; but it is 
worth noticing that, in the opinion of Americans them- 
selves, it is, at least, not by comparison with the heredi- 
tary aristocracy that they show to any disadvantage. 

Nor need one accept the opinion (in which many 
eminent Englishmen coincide with the universal Amer- 
ican belief) that the United States Supreme Court is 
the ablest as well as the greatest judicial tribunal in 
the world. But when one looks at the membership of 
that Court and at the majority of the members of the 
Senate (especially those members from the older States 
which hold to some tradition of fixity of tenure), when 
one sees the men who constitute the Cabinets of 
successive Presidents and those who fill the more dis- 



314 The Twentieth Century American 

tinguished diplomatic posts, when, farther, one becomes 
acquainted with the class of men from which, all over 
the country, the presidents and attorneys of the great 
railway corporations and banks and similar institutions 
are drawn (all of which offices, it will be noticed, with 
the exception of the senatorships, are filled by nomina- 
tion or appointment and not by popular election) — 
when one looks at, sees, and becomes acquainted with 
all these, he will begin to correct his impressions as to 
the non-existence of an American aristocracy which, 
though innocent of heraldry, can fairly be matched 
against the British. 

The average Englishman looks at America and sees 
a people wherein there is no recognised aristocracy 
nor any titles. Also he sees that it is, through all its 
classes, a commercial people, immersed in business. 
Therefore he concludes that it is similar to what the 
English people would be if cut off at the top of the 
classes engaged in business and with all the upper 
classes wiped out. It will be much nearer the truth 
if he considers the people as a whole to be class for 
class just like the English people, subject to the acci- 
dent that there are no titles, but with the difference 
that all classes, including the untitled Dukes and Mar- 
quises and Earls, take to business as to their natural 
element. The parallel may not be perfect; but it is 
incomparably more nearly exact than the alternative 
and general impression. 

It is of course necessary to recognise how rapidly 
the constitution of English society is changing, how 
old traditions are dying out, and in accordance with 
the Anglo-Saxon instinct the social scheme is tending 



Commercial Morality 315 

to assimilate itself to the American model. The facts 
in outline are almost too familiar to be worth mention- 
ing, except perhaps for the benefit of some American 
readers, for Americans in England are continually 
puzzled by anomalies which they see in English so- 
ciety. In my childhood I was taught that no gentle- 
man could buy or sell anything for profit and preserve 
either his self-respect or the respect of his fellows. 
The only conceivable exceptions — and I think I was 
not informed of them at too early an age — were that a 
gentleman might deal in horses or in wines and still 
remain, if somewhat shaded, a gentleman ; the reason 
being that a knowledge of either horses or wines was 
a gentlemanly accomplishment. The indulgence ex- 
tended to the vendor of wines did not extend to the 
maker or seller of beer. I remember the resentment 
of the school when the sons of a certain wealthy 
brewer were admitted ; and those boys had, I imagine, 
a cheerless time of it in their schooldays. The eldest 
of those boys, being now the head of the family, is 
to-day a peer. But at that time, though brewers or 
brewers' sons might be admitted grudgingly to the 
company of gentlemen, they were not gentlemen them- 
selves. An aunt or a cousin who married a manu- 
facturer, a merchant, or a broker — no matter how rich 
or in how large a way of business — was coldly regarded, 
if not actually cut, by the rest of the family. There 
are many families — though hardly now a class — in 
which the same traditions persist, but even the fami- 
lies in which the horror of trade is as great as ever 
make an exception as a rule in favour of trade con- 
ducted in the United States. The American may be 
pardoned for being bewildered when in an aristocracy 



316 The Twentieth Century American 

which is forbidden, so he is told, to make money in 
trade, he finds no lack of individuals who are willing 
to take shares in any trading concern in which money 
in sufficient quantities may be made. The person who 
will not speak to an English farmer except as to an 
inferior, sends his own sons to the Colonies or to the 
United States to farm. These things, however, are, to 
Englishmen, mere platitudes. But though all are 
familiar with the change which is passing over the 
British people, few Englishmen, perhaps, have realised 
how rapidly the peerage itself is coming to be a trade- 
representing body. Of seventeen peers of recent crea- 
tion, taken at random, nine owe their money and 
peerages to business, and the present holders of the 
title were themselves brought up to a business career. 
It may not be long before the English aristocracy will 
be as universally occupied in business as is the Ameri- 
can ; and it will be as natural for an Earl to go to his 
office as it is for the American millionaire (perhaps 
the father of the Countess) to do so to-day. 

In spite of all the change that has taken place, how- 
ever, it still remains very difficult for the English 
gentleman, or member of a gentle family 7 , to engage 
actively in business — certainly in trade — without be- 
ing made to feel that he is stepping down into a lower 
sphere where there is a new and vitiated atmosphere. 
The code of ethics, he understands, is not that to 
which he is accustomed at his club and in his country 
house. He trusts that it will not be necessary to for- 
get that he himself is a gentleman, but at least he will 
have to remember that his associates are only business 
men. 

The American aristocrat, on the other hand, takes 



Commercial Morality 317 

to business as being the most attractive and honour- 
able career. Setting aside all question of money- 
making, he believes it to be (and his father tells him 
that it is) the best life for him. Idleness is not good 
for any man. He will enjoy his annual month or two 
of shooting or fishing or yachting all the better for 
having spent the last ten or eleven months in hard 
work. Moreover, immersion in affairs will keep him 
active and alert and in touch with his fellow-men, 
besides being in itself one of the largest and most 
fascinating of pastimes. There is also the money ; 
but when business is put on this level, money has a 
tendency to become only one among many objects. 
In England no man can with any grace pretend that he 
goes into business for any other reason than to make 
money. In America a man goes into it in order to 
gain standing and respect and make a reputation. 

Under these conditions, to return to our original 
point, in which country, putting other things aside, 
would one naturally expect to find the better code of 
business morals? Let us, if we can, consider the 
matter, as has been said before, without preconceived 
ideas or individual bias ; let us imagine that we are 
speaking of two countries in which we have no per- 
sonal stake whatever. If in any two such countries — 
in Gombroonia and Tigrosylvania, let us say — we 
should see two peoples approximately matched, of 
one tongue and having similar political ideals, not 
visibly unequal in strength, in abilities, or in the in- 
dividual sense of honour, and if in one we should 
further see the aristocracy regarding the pursuit of 
commerce as a thing beneath and unworthy of them, 
in which they could not engage without contamination, 



318 The Twentieth Century American 

while in the other it was followed as the most honour- 
able of careers, — in which of the two should we expect 
to find the higher code of commercial ethics? 

It does not seem to me that there can be any doubt 
as to the answer. Other things being equal, and as a 
matter of theory only, business in the United States 
ought to be ruled by much higher standards of con- 
duct than in Eno-land. 

O 

Before proceeding to an analysis of any particular 
conditions, there is one further general consideration 
which I would urge on the attention of English readers, 
most of whom have preconceived ideas on this sub- 
ject already formed. 

I am not among those who believe that trade or 
commerce of ordinary kinds either requires or tends 
to develop great intellectuality in those engaged in 
it. Indeed, my opinion (for which I am willing to 
be abused) is that any considerable measure of intellect 
is a hindrance to success in retail trade or in commerce 
on a small scale. It is a thesis which some one might 
develop at leisure, showing that it is not merely not 
creditable for a man to make money in trade but 
that it is an explicit avowal of intellectual poverty. 
Whence, of course, it follows that the London trades- 
man who grows rich and retires to the country or sub- 
urbs to build himself a statelier mansion is more justly 
an object of pity, if not of contempt, than is often con- 
sciously acknowledged. Any imaginative quality or 
breadth of vision which contributes to distract the 
mind of a tradesman from the one transaction immedi- 
ately in hand and the immediate financial results there- 
of is a disqualification. I state my views thus in their 
extreme form lest the English reader should think that 



Commercial Morality 319 

I entertain too much respect (or too little contempt) for 
the purely commercial brain. At the same time the 
English reader will concede that commercial enter- 
prises and industrial undertakings may be on such a 
scale as to offer full exercise to the largest intellects. 

As an illustration of this: Cecil Rhodes grew, as we 
know, wealthy from the proceeds of vast undertakings ; 
but men closely associated with him have assured me 
that Rhodes was a very indifferent "business man." 
We may, I think, take it for certain that if Rhodes 
had been condemned to conduct a retail grocery he 
would have conducted it to speedy irretrievable dis- 
aster. We are probably all agreed that the conduct of 
a small grocery does not require fineness of intellect ; 
most English readers, I think, will follow me in believ- 
ing that success in such a sphere of life implies at least 
an imperfect intellectual development. On the other 
hand enterprises truly Rhodian do call for intellectual 
grasp of the largest. 

The consideration which I wish to urge is that 
business in the United States during the period of 
growth and settlement of the country has been largely 
on Rhodian lines. The great enterprises by which the 
country has been developed, and on which most of the 
large fortunes of individual Americans are based, have 
been of truly imperial proportions. The flinging of 
railways across thousands of miles of wilderness (Eng- 
land has made peers of the men who did it in Canada) 
with the laying out of cities and the peopling of pro- 
vinces ; the building of great fleets of boats upon the 
lakes ; the vast mining schemes in remote and in- 
accessible regions of the country ; lumbering enter- 
prises which (even though not always honestly) dealt 



320 The Twentieth Century American 

with virgin forests by the hundreds of square miles ; 
" bonanza " wheat farming and the huge systems of 
grain elevators for the handling of the wheat and the 
conveyance of it to the market or the mill ; cattle 
ranching on a stupendous scale (perhaps even the col- 
lecting of those cattle in their thousands daily for 
slaughter in the packing houses) ; the irrigating of 
wide tracts of desert ; — these things and such as these 
are the " businesses " out of which the Americans of 
the last and present generations have largely made 
their fortunes. And they are enterprises, most of 
them, not unworthy to rank with Chartered Com- 
panies and the construction of railways from the 
North to the South of Africa. 

Not only this, but something of the same qualities of 
spaciousness, as of trafficking between large horizons, 
attach to almost all lines of business in the United 
States, — to many which in England are necessarily 
humdrum and commonplace. Almost every English- 
man has been surprised on making the acquaintance 
of an accidental American (no " magnate " or " captain 
of industry " but an ordinary business man) to learn 
that though he is no more than the manufacturer of 
some matter-of-fact article, his operations are on a con- 
fusing scale and that, with branch offices in three or 
four towns and agents in a dozen more, his daily deal- 
ings are transacted over an area reaching three thou- 
sand miles from his home office, in which the interpos- 
ition of prairies, mountain ranges, and chains of lakes 
are but incidents. Business in the United States has 
almost necessarily something of the romance of remote 
and adventurous enterprises. 

It has been said (and the point is worth insisting on) 



Commercial Morality 321 

that the Englishman cannot pretend that he goes into 
business with any other object than to make money. 
His motives are on the face of them mercenary if not 
sordid. The American is impelled primarily by quite 
other ambitions. Similarly, when the Englishman 
thinks of business, the image which he conjures up in 
his mind is of a dull commonplace like, on lines so long 
established and well-defined that they can embrace lit- 
tle of novelty or of enterprise ; a sedentary life of 
narrow outlook from the unexhilarating atmosphere of 
a London office or shop. To the American, except in 
small or retail trade in the large cities, the condi- 
tions of business are widely different All around 
him, lies, both actually and figuratively, new ground, 
wilderness almost, inviting him to turn Argonaut. 
The mere vastness and newness of the country make 
it full of allurement to adventure, the rewards of 
which are larger and more immediate than can be 
hoped for in older and more straitened communities. 
It has been said that the American people was, by 
its long period of isolation and self-communion, made 
to become, in its outlook on the policies of the 
world, a provincial people ; but that the very provin- 
cialism had something of dignity in it from the mere 
fact that it was continent-wide. So it is with Ameri- 
can business. The exigencies of their circumstances 
have made the American people a commercial people ; 
but whereas in England a commercial life may not 
offer scope for any intellectual activity and may even 
have a necessary tendency to stunt the mentality of 
any one engaged in it, business in the United States 
offers exercise to a much larger gamut of abilities and, 
by its mere range and variety, instead of dwarfing has 



322 The Twentieth Century American 

a tendency to keep those abilities trained and alert. 
A business in England has not approximately the 
same large theatre of operation or the same variety of 
incident as a business of the same turn over in America. 
It is almost the difference between the man who fur- 
nishes his larder by going out to his farmyard and 
wringing the necks of tame ducks therein, and him 
who must snatch the same supply with his gun from 
the wild flocks in the wilderness. 

But, indeed, no argument should be needed on the 
subject ; for one solid fact with which almost every Eng- 
lishman is familiar is that in any American (let us use 
the word) shopkeeper whom he may meet travelling in 
Europe there is a certain mental alertness, freshness, 
and vigour, however objectionably they may at times 
display themselves — which are at least not character- 
istic of the English shopkeeping class. 

Just, then, as we have seen that, if we knew nothing 
about the peoples of the two countries, beyond the 
broad outlines of their respective social structures, we 
should be compelled, other things being equal, to look 
for a higher code of commercial morality in America 
than in England, so, when we see one further fact, 
namely that of the difference in the conditions under 
which business is conducted, we must naturally, other 
things being equal, look for a livelier intellect and a 
higher grade of mentality in the American than in the 
English business man. 

Unfortunately other things never are equal. First, 
there is the taint of the political corruption in America 
which must, as has been said, in some measure con- 
taminate the community. Then, England is an old 



Commercial Morality 323 

country, with all the machinery of society running in 
long-accustomed grooves ; above all it is a wealthy 
country and the first among creditor nations, to whose 
interest it has been, and is, to see that every bond and 
every engagement be literally and exactly carried out. 
The United States in the nineteenth century was young 
and undisciplined, with all the ardour of youth going 
out to conquer the world, seeing all things in rose- 
colour, but, for the present, — poor. It was, like any 
other youth confident of the golden future, lavish alike 
in its borrowings and its spendings, over-careless of 
forms and formalities. Happily the confidence in the 
future has been justified and ten times justified, and it 
is rich — richer than it yet knows — with resources larger 
even than it has learned properly to appraise or con- 
trol. Whatever obligations it incurred in the head- 
long past are trifles to it now, — a few hundreds of 
college debts to a man who has come into millions. 
And with its position now assured it has grown jeal- 
ous of its credit, national and individual. 

It was inevitable that the heedless days should be- 
get indiscretions, the memories of which smart to-day. 
It was inevitable that amid so much recklessness and 
easy faith there should be some wrong-doing. Above 
all, was it inevitable that in the realisation of its 
dreams, when wealth and power grew and money 
came pouring into it, there should be bred in the peo- 
ple an extraordinary and unwholesome love of specu- 
lation which in turn opened their opportunities to the 
gambler and the confidence-man of all kinds and sizes. 
They flourished in the land, — the man who wrecked 
railways and issued fictitious millions of " securities," 
the man who robbed the government of moneys de- 



324 The Twentieth Century American 

stined for the support of Indians or the establishment 
of postal routes in the farther West, the man who 
salted mines, the "land-grabber" and the "timber- 
shark " who dealt not in acres but in hundreds of 
square miles, the bogus trust company, and the 
fraudulent land and investment agent. When even 
the smallest community begins to " boom," the people 
of the community lose their heads and the harvest 
ripens to the sickle of the swindler. And the entire 
United States — sometimes in one part, sometimes in 
another, sometimes all together, — with only an oc- 
casional and short-lived panic to check the madness^ 
boomed continuously for half a century. 

It is still booming, but with wealth, established in- 
stitutions, and invested capital, have come comparative 
soberness and a sense of responsibility. The spirit 
which governs American industrial life to-day is quite 
other than that which ruled it two or three decades ago. 
The United States has sown its wild oats. It was a 
generous sowing, certainly, for the land was wide and 
the soil rich. But that harvest has been all but gar- 
nered and the country is now for the most part given 
over to more legitimate crops. 

[Tares still spring up among the wheat. The com- 
mercial community is not yet as well ordered as that 
of England or another older country ; and since the 
foregoing paragraphs were written, the panic which 
fell upon the United States in the closing months of 
1907 has occurred. The country had enjoyed a decade 
of extraordinary financial prosperity, in the course of 
which, in the spirit of speculation which has already 
been mentioned, all values had been forced to too high 
a level, credits had been extended beyond the margin 



Commercial Morality 325 

of safety, and the volume of business transactions had 
swollen to such bulk in proportion to the amount of 
actual monetary wealth in existence that any shock to 
public confidence, any nervousness resulting in a con- 
traction of the circulating medium, could not fail to 
produce catastrophe. The shock came ; as sooner or 
later it had to come. In the stern period of struggle 
and retrenchment which followed, all the weak spots 
in the financial and industrial fabric of the country 
have been laid bare and, while depression and distress 
have spread over the whole United States, until all 
parts are equally involved, not only have the expo- 
sures of anything approaching dishonest or illegitimate 
methods been few, but the way in which the business 
communities at large have stood the strain has shown 
that there is nothing approaching unsoundness in the 
general business conditions. "With the system of 
credit shattered and with hardly circulating medium 
enough to conduct the necessary petty transactions of 
everyday life, the country is already recovering confi- 
dence and feeling its way back to normal conditions. 
The results have not been approximately as bad as 
those which followed the panic of 1893 ; and the differ- 
ence is an index to the immensely greater stability of 
the country's industries. Meanwhile there was at first 
(and still exists) a feeling of intense indignation in all 
parts of the country that so much suffering should have 
been thrown upon the whole people by the misbehav- 
iour of a small circle of men in New York. The expe- 
rience, however painful, will in the long ran be salutary. 
It will be salutary in the first place for the obvious 
reason that business will have to start again conserva- 
tively and with inflated values reduced to something 



326 The Twentieth Century American 

below normal levels. But it will be even more salutary 
for the less obvious reason that it has intensified the 
already acute disgust of the business men of the country 
as a whole with what are known as " Wall Street meth- 
ods." Englishmen generally have an idea that Wall 
Street methods are the methods of all the United 
States ; and, while they have had impressed upon them 
every detail of those financial irregularities in the small 
New York clique which precipitated the catastrophe, 
they have heard and know nothing of the coolness 
and cheery resolution with which the crisis has been 
faced by the commercial classes as a whole.] 

England has not yet forgotten the disclosures in the 
matter of the Chicago packing houses. That the light 
which was then turned on that industry revealed con- 
ditions that were in some details inconceivably shock- 
ing, is hardly to be doubted : and I trust that those 
are mistaken who say that if similar investigation had 
been made into the methods of certain English estab- 
lishments, before warning was given, the state of affairs 
would have been found not much different. What is 
certain, however, is that the English public received an 
exaggerated idea of the extent of the abuses. In part, 
this was a necessary result of the exigencies of jour- 
nalism. A large majority of the newspapers even of 
London — certainly those which reach a large majority 
of the readers — prefer sensationalism. Even those 
which are anxious in such cases to be fair and tem- 
perate are sadly hampered both by the limitations of 
space in their own columns and by the costliness of 
telegraphic correspondence. It is inevitable that 
the most conservative and judicial of correspondents 
should transmit to his papers whatever are the most 



Commercial Morality 327 

striking items — revelations — accusations in an indict- 
ment such as was then framed against the packers. 
The more damning details are the best news. On the 
other hand he cannot, save to a ridiculously dispro- 
portionate extent, transmit the extenuating circum- 
stances, the individual denials, the local atmosphere. 
Telegraph tolls are heavy and space is straitened 
while atmosphere and extenuating circumstances are 
not news at all. An Englishman is generally aston- 
ished when he reads the accounts of some conspicuous 
divorce case or great financial scandal in England as 
they appear in the American (or for that matter the 
French or German) papers, with the editorial com- 
ments thereupon. In the picture of any event hap- 
pening at a great distance the readers of even the 
best-intentioned journals necessarily have presented to 
their view only the highest lights and the blackest 
shadows. In this instance a certain section of the 
American press — what is specifically known as the 
"yellow" press — had strong motives, of a political 
kind, for making the case against the packers as bad 
as possible. It is unfortunate that many of the London 
newspapers look much too largely to that particular 
class of American paper for their American news and 
their views on current American events. 

If we assume that any reasonable proportion of the 
accusations made against the packing houses were 
true of some one or other establishment, it still remains 
that a considerable proportion of the American busi- 
ness community is otherwise engaged than in the 
canning of meats. There is a story well known in 
America of a countryman who entered a train with a 
packet of eggs, none too fresh, in his coat-tail pocket. 



328 The Twentieth Century American 

He sat down upon them ; but deemed it best to con- 
tinue sitting rather than give the contents a chance to 
run down his person. Meanwhile the smell permeated 
through the car and at last the passenger sitting 
immediately behind the countryman saw whence the 
unpleasantness arose. Whereupon he fell to abusing 
the other. 

" Thunder ! " exclaimed the countryman. " What 
have you got to complain of? You 've only got the 
smell. / 'm sitting in it ! " 

This is much how Americans feel in regard to foreign 
criticisms of the packing house scandals. Whatever 
wrong-doing there may have been in individual estab- 
lishments in this one industry in Chicago, is no more to 
be taken as typical of the commercial ethics of the 
American people than the discovery of a fraudulent 
trader or group of traders in one particular line in 
Manchester or Glasgow would imply that the British 
trading public was corrupt. The mere ruthlessness 
with which, in this case, the wrong-doers were exposed 
ought in itself to be a sufficient evidence to outsiders 
that the American public is no more willingly tolerant 
of dishonesty than any other people. Judged, indeed, 
by that criterion, surely no other country can detest 
wrong-doing so whole-heartedly. 

And I wish here to protest against the habit which 
the worst section of the English newspapers has adopted 
during the last year or so of holding " American 
methods " in business up to contempt. It is true that 
it is not done with any idea of directing hostility 
against the United States ; and those who use the 
catchword so freely would undoubtedly much prefer 



Commercial Morality 329 

to speak of " German methods " or even " French " or 
"Russian methods," if they could. All that is meant 
is that the methods are un-English and alien ; but 
whether the intention is to lessen the public good-will 
towards the United States or not, that must inevitably 
be the effect. Even if it were not, the American 
public is abundantly justified in resenting it. 

The idea that America is trust-ridden to the extent 
popularly supposed in England has been carefully 
fostered by those extreme journals in America already 
referred to (it is impossible not to speak of them as 
the Yellow Press) for personal and political reasons — 
reasons which Englishmen would comprehend if they 
understood better the present political situation in the 
United States. The idea has been encouraged by 
divers English "impressionist" authors and writers 
on the English press who, with a superficial knowledge 
of American affairs, have caught the jargon of the same 
school of American journalist-politicians. It has been 
further confirmed by a misunderstanding of the atti- 
tude and policy of President Roosevelt himself, which 
has already been sufficiently dealt with. 

England is, in the American sense, much more 
" trust-ridden " than the United States. It is not 
merely that (as any reference to statistics will show) 
wealth is less concentrated in America than in England 
— that nothing like the same proportion of the capital 
of the country is lodged in a few hands — for that, inas- 
much as the majority of large fortunes in Great Britain 
are not commercial in their origin, might mean little ; 
but in business the opportunity for the small trader 
and the man without backing to win to independence 
is a hundred times greater in America, while the 



33° The Twentieth Century American 

control exercised by "rings" and "cliques" over cer- 
tain large industries in England and over the access to 
certain large markets is, I think, much more complete 
than has been attained, except most temporarily, by 
any trust or ring in the United States, except, as in the 
case of oil, where artificial monopoly has been assisted 
by natural conditions. 

The tendency in the United States even in the last 
twenty years has not been in the direction of a con- 
centration of wealth, but towards its diffusion in a 
degree unparalleled in any country in the world. The 
point in which the United States is economically 
almost immeasurably superior to England is not in the 
number of her big fortunes but in the enormously 
greater well-to-do-ness of the middle classes — the vastly 
larger number of persons of moderate affluence, who 
are in the enjoyment of incomes which in England 
would class them among the reasonably rich. 

Consolidation and amalgamation are the necessary 
and unavoidable tendencies of modern business. As 
surely as the primitive partnership succeeded individ- 
ual effort and as, later, corporations were created to 
enlarge the sphere of partnerships, so is it certain that 
the industrial units which will fight for control of trade 
in the much larger markets of the modern world will 
represent vastly larger aggregations of capital than 
(except in extraordinary and generally state-aided 
institutions) were dreamed of fifty years ago. That 
must be accepted as a certainty. It does not by any 
means necessarily follow that this process entails a con- 
centration of wealth in fewer hands ; on the contrary 
the larger a corporation is, the wider proportionally, as 
a general rule, is the circle of the shareholders in whom 



Commercial Morality 331 

the property is vested. But presuming the commercial 
growth of the United States to continue for half a 
century yet on the lines on which it has developed in 
the last two decades, the country will then, not so 
much by any concentration of wealth, but by the mere 
filling up of the commercial field (so that by increase 
in the intensity of competition the opportunity for the 
small or new trader to force his way to the surface will 
be more curtailed, and the gulf between owner or em- 
ployer and non-owner or employed will become greater 
and more permanent) — if, I say, that growth should 
continue for another fifty years then will the conditions 
in America approximate to those in England. This it 
is against which the masses in America are more or less 
blindly and unconsciously fighting to-day. The com- 
parison with European conditions is generally not 
formulated in the individual mind ; but an approach 
to those conditions is what the masses of America see 
— or think they see — in the tendency towards greater 
aggregations of corporate power. It is not the process 
of aggregation, but the protest against it, which is pe- 
culiar to the United States : not the trust-power but 
the hatred of it. 

This being so, for Englishmen or other Europeans 
to speak of all manifestations of the process itself as 
" American " is not a little absurd. Besides which, to 
so speak of it in the tone which is generally adopted is 
extremely impolite to a kindred people whose good- 
will Englishmen ought to, and do, desire to keep. 

The thing is best illustrated by taking a single ex- 
ample. The term "Trust" is, of course, very vaguely 
used, being generally taken, quite apart from its proper 
significance, to mean any form of combination, corpor- 



33 2 The Twentieth Century American 

ate aggregation, or working agreement which tends to 
extend control of a company or individual, or group of 
companies or individuals, over a larger proportion of a 
particular trade or industry. In the United States, 
with the possible exception of the Standard Oil Com- 
pany (which is not properly a trust), the form of 
corporate power against which there has been the most 
bitterness is that of the railways, and the specific form 
of railway organisation most fiercely attacked has been 
the Pool or Joint Purse — which is, in all essentials, a 
true trust. In 1887 the formation of a Pool, or Joint 
Purse Agreement, was made illegal in the United 
States ; but Englishmen can have no conception of the 
popular hatred of the word " Pools " which exists in 
America or of the obloquy which has been heaped 
upon railway companies for entering into them. Few 
Englishmen on the other hand have any clear idea of 
what a Joint Purse Agreement is ; and they jog along 
contentedly ignorant that this iniquitous engine for 
their oppression is in daily use by the British railway 
companies. 

My personal belief is that the prohibition of pools 
in America was a mistake : that it would have been 
better for the country from the first to have authorised, 
even encouraged, their formation, as in England, under 
efficient governmental supervision. But the point is 
that the majority of the American people thought 
otherwise and no other manifestation of the trust- 
tendency has been more virulently attacked than the — 
to English ideas — harmless institution of a joint purse. 
And whether the American people ultimately acted 
wisely or unwisely, they were justified in regarding 
any form of association or agreement between railways 



Commercial Morality 333 

with more apprehension than would be reasonable in 
England. It is not possible here to explain why this 
is so, except to say broadly that the longer distances in 
America and the lack of other forms of transportation 
render an American community, especially in the 
West, more dependent upon the railway than is the 
case in England. The conditions give the railway 
company a larger control over, or influence in, the 
well-being of the people. 

An excellent illustration of the difference in the 
point of view of the two peoples has been furnished 
since the above was written by the announcements, 
within a few weeks of each other in December 1907, 
of the formation of two " working agreements " be- 
tween British railway companies, — that namely between 
the Great Northern and Great Central railways and 
that between the North British and Caledonian. In 
the former case the Boards of Directors of the two com- 
panies merely constituted themselves a Joint Committee 
to operate the two railways conjointly. In the latter, 
not many details of the agreement were made public, 
except that it was intended to control competition in 
all classes of traffic and, as the first fruits thereof, there 
was an immediate and not unimportant increase in 
certain classes of passenger rates. Neither agreement 
has, I think, yet received the sanction of the proper 
authorities, but the public generally received the an- 
nouncement of both with approval amounting almost 
to enthusiasm. Of these agreements the former, cer- 
tainly, and presumably the latter, would be flagrantly 
illegal in the United States. If, moreover, an attempt 
were made in America to arrive at the same ends in 
some roundabout way which would avoid technical 



334 The Twentieth Century American 

illegality, the outburst of popular indignation would 
make it impossible. Personally I sympathise with 
the English view and believe both agreements to be 
not only just and proper but in the public interest ; 
but it is certain that they would have created such an 
uproar in the United States that English newspapers 
would inevitably have reflected the disturbance, and 
English readers would have been convinced that once 
more the Directorates of American railways were en- 
gaged in a nefarious attempt to use the power of capital 
for the plundering and oppression of the public. In the 
still more recent debate (February 1908) in the House 
of Commons, the views expressed by both Mr. Lloyd 
George and Mr. Bonar Law in favour of the lessening 
of competition between railway companies would have 
exposed them to the hysterical abuse of a large part 
of the American press. Both those gentlemen would 
have been openly accused of being the tools of (if not 
actually subsidised by) the corporations, and (but for 
Mr. Bonar Law's company) Mr. Lloyd George's atti- 
tude would, I think, be sufficient to ruin an Adminis- 
tration. These statements contain no reflection on the 
American point of view. The conditions are such 
that that point of view may, in America, be the right 
one. But the absurdity is that Englishmen hear these 
things, or read of them as being said in the United 
States, and thereupon assume that terrible offences are 
being perpetrated; whereas nothing is being done 
which in England would not receive the approval of 
the majority of sensible men and be temperately ap- 
plauded by the spokesmen of both the great parties in 
Parliament. It is not, I say again, the Trust-power, 
but the hatred of it, which is peculiar to America. 



Commercial Morality 335 

The same is true of the field as a whole. Things 
harmless in England might be very dangerous in 
America. We have so far considered the trust power 
only as a commercial and industrial factor — in its 
tendency, by crystallisation or consolidation in the 
higher strata, to depress the economic status of the 
industrial masses and to make the emergence of the in- 
dividual trader into independence more difficult. In 
this aspect capital is immensely more dominant in 
England than in America. But there is a political 
side to the problem. 

In the United States, owing to the absence of a 
throne and an established aristocracy, there is, as it 
were, no counterpoise to the power of wealth. This is, 
in practice, the chief virtue of the throne in the British 
constitution, that, in its capacity as the Fountain of 
Honour, it prevents wealth from becoming the domi- 
nant power in the country and thereby (which Amer- 
icans are slow to understand) is the most democratic 
of forces, protecting the proletariat in some measure 
against the possibility of unhindered oppression by an 
omnipotent capitalism. The English masses are already 
by the mere impenetrability of the commercial structure 
above them much worse off than the corresponding 
masses in the United States. What their condition 
might be if for a generation the social restraint put 
upon wealth by the power of the throne and the es- 
tablished aristocracy were to be relaxed, it is not 
pleasant to consider. Nor need it be considered. ' 

> The reader will, of course, understand that the political or 
industrial power of capital is entirely a separate thing from 
the ability of wealth to buy luxury, deference or social recog- 
nition for its possessor. In this particular there is little to 



33 6 The Twentieth Century American 

It is, I think, evident that in America the danger 
to the industrial independence of the individual which 
might arise from the aggregation of wealth in a few 
hands is much greater than in England. The power 
would be capable of greater abuse ; the evils which 
would flow from such abuse would be greater. It is 
not wealth, but the abuse of it that he is attacking, 
says President Eoosevelt — not the wealthy class, but 
the " wealthy criminal class." The distinction has not 
been digested by those in England who rail against 
American methods or who write of American politics. 
It is necessary — or so it seems to a large number of the 
American people — that extraordinary checks should be 
put upon the possibility of the abuse of wealth in the 
United States, such as do not exist or are not needed 
(or at least we have heard no energetic demand for 
them) in England. As a political fact there is need of 
especial vigilance in the United States lest corporate 
power be abused. As a commercial fact it is merely 
preposterous to rail at the modern tendency to con- 
solidation and amalgamation as specifically "American." 

It is probably safe to say that if the United States 
had such a social counterweight as is furnished in 
England by the throne and the recognised aristocracy, 
the growth of what is called " trust-power " would be 
viewed to-day with comparative unconcern. At all 
events England is able to view with something like 
unconcern the conditions, as they exist in England, 
worse than, as has been said, the trust power is 
humanly capable of imposing on the American people 

choose between the two and curiously enough, each country 
has been called by visitors from the other the "paradise of 
the wealthy." 



Commercial Morality 337 

in another half-century of unhindered growth. Which, 
American readers will please understand, is not a 
suggestion that the United States would be bene- 
fited, even commercially, by the institution of a 
monarchy. 

Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Englishmen 
long ago acquired the idea that American business 
methods in what may be called large affairs were too 
often unscrupulous ; and of such methods, there were 
certainly examples. I have explained why the temp- 
tations to, and the opportunities for, dishonesty were 
very great in the earlier days and it would be impos- 
sible to find language too severe to characterise many 
of the things which were done — not once, but again 
and again — in the manipulation of railways, the steal- 
ing of public lands, and the plundering of the public 
treasury. The dog deserved as bad a name as he re- 
ceived. But that dog died. The Americans themselves 
stoned him to death — with precisely the same ferocity 
as they have recently exhibited when they discovered, 
as they feared, some of his litter in the Chicago pack- 
ing houses — or a year before in the offices of certain 
insurance companies. The present generation of 
Americans may not be any better men than their 
fathers (let us hope that they are, if only for the re- 
putation of the vast immigration of Englishmen and 
Scotchmen which has poured into the country) but at 
least they are much less tempted. They live under a 
new social code. They have nothing like the same 
opportunity for successful dishonesty and immeasura- 
bly greater chance of punishment, whether visited on 
them by the law or by the opinion of their fellows, if 
unsuccessful or found out. It is not fair that the new 



33 8 The Twentieth Century American 

dog should be damned to drag around the old dog's 
name. 

There is an excellent analogy in which the relations 
of the two peoples are reversed. 

Americans are largely of the opinion that the British 
aristocracy is a disreputable class. They gave that dog 
its name too ; and there have been individual scandals 
enough in the past to justify it. It is useless for an 
Englishman living in America to endeavour to modify 
this opinion in even a small circle, for it is only a ques- 
tion of time — probably of a very short time — before 
some peer turns up in the divorce court and the Eng- 
lishmen's friends will send him newspaper clippings 
containing the Court Report and will hail him on street 
corners and at the club with : " How about your Brit- 
ish aristocracy now ? " 

Americans cannot see the British peerage as a whole ; 
they only hear of those who thrust themselves into 
unsavoury notoriety. So Englishmen get no view of the 
American business community in its entirety, but only 
read with relish the occasional scandal. Of the two, the 
American has the better, or at least more frequent, justi- 
fication for his error than has the Englishman ; but it is 
a pity that the two cannot somehow agree to an ex- 
change. Perhaps a treaty might be entered into (if it 
were not for the United States Senate) which, when 
ratified, should be published in all newspapers and 
posted in all public places in both countries, setting 
forth that : 

"In consideration of the Party of the Second 
Part hereafter cherishing a belief in the marital fidelity 



Commercial Morality 339 

and general moral purity of all members of the British 
peerage, their wives, heirs, daughters, and near relations, 
and further agreeing that when, by any unfortunate 
mishap, any individual member of the said Peerage or 
his wife, daughter, or other relation shall have been 
discovered and publicly shown to have offended against 
the marriage laws or otherwise violated the canons of 
common decency, to understand and take it for granted 
that such mishap, offence, or violation is a quite ex- 
ceptional occurrence owing to the unexplainable de- 
pravity of the individual and that it in no way reflects 
upon the other members of the said Peerage, whether 
in the mass or individually, or their wives, daughters, 
or near relations: Therefore the Party of the First 
Part hereby agrees to decline to give any credence 
whatsoever to any story, remark, or reflection to the 
discredit of the general honesty of the American com- 
mercial classes or public men, but agrees that he will 
hereafter assume them to be trustworthy and truthful 
whether individually or in the mass, except in such 
cases as shall have been publicly proven to the contrary, 
and that he will always understand and declare that 
such isolated cases are purely sporadic and not in any 
way to be taken as evidences either of an epidemic or 
of a general low state of public morality, but that on 
the contrary the said American commercial classes do, 
whether in the mass or individually, hate and despise an 
occasional scoundrel among them as heartily as would 
the Party of the First Part hate and despise such a 
scoundrel if found among his own people — as, he 
confesses, does occasionally occur." 

Nonsense ? Of course it is nonsense. But the de- 



34° The Twentieth Century American 

sirable thing is that Englishmen should be brought to 
understand that after all it is but an inconsiderable 
portion of the American business community that is 
permanently employed in the manufacture of wooden 
nutmegs, in selling canned horrors for food, or in watering 
railway shares, and that Americans should believe that 
there are quitealargenumberof men of high birth in Eng- 
land who are only infrequently engaged in either beating 
their own wives orrunning away with those of other men. 

The brief confessional clause at the conclusion of 
the above draft I take to be an important portion of the 
document It is not necessary that a similar confes- 
sion should be incorporated in the behalf of the Party 
of the Second Part, not because there are no family 
scandals in America, but because, in the absence of a 
peerage, it is not easy to tell when a divorce or other 
scandal occurs among the aristocracy. " Scandal in 
High Life " is such a tempting heading to a column that 
the American newspapers are generous in their interpre- 
tation of the term and many a man and woman, on get- 
ting into trouble, must have been surprised to learn for 
the first time that their ambitions had been realised, un- 
known to themselves, and that they did indeed belong to 
that class which they had for so long yearned to enter. 

This fact also is worth considering, namely, that 
whereas in England it is not impossible that there may 
be more scandals of a financial sort, both in official 
circles and outside, than the public ever hears of 
through the press ; it is reasonably certain that in 
America the press publishes full details of a good 
many more scandals than ever occur. 

This peculiarity of the American press (for it is still 
peculiar to America, in degree at least, if not in kind) 



Commercial Morality 341 

does not arise from any set purpose of blackening the 
reputation of the country in the eyes of the outside 
world, but is entirely the result of "enterprise," of in- 
dividual ambition, and the extremity of partisan enthu- 
siasm. Other nations may be quite certain that they 
hear all the worst that is to be told of the people of 
the United States. Out of the Spanish war arose what 
came to be known as the "embalmed beef" scandal. 
American soldiers in Cuba were furnished with a 
quantity of rations which, by the time they reached 
the front and an effort was made to serve them out, 
were entirely unfit for human consumption. Un- 
doubtedly much suffering was thereby caused to the 
men and probably some disease. But, equally un- 
doubtedly, the catastrophe arose from an error in 
judgment and not from dishonesty of contractors or 
of any government official. But, as the incident was 
handled by a section of the American press, it might 
well, had the two great parties at the time been more 
evenly balanced in public favour, have resulted in the 
ruin of the reputation of an administration and the over- 
throw of the Eepublican party at the next election. 

If the Re-mount scandals and the Army Stores scan- 
dals which arose out of England's South African war 
had occurred in America, I doubt if any party could 
have stood against the storm that would have been 
provoked, and, deriving their ideas of the affairs from 
the cabled reports, Englishmen of all classes would 
still be shaking their heads over the inconceivable 
dishonesty in the American public service and the 
deplorable standard of honour in the American army. 
It may be necessary and wholesome for a people that 
occasionally certain kinds of dirty linen should be 



34 2 The Twentieth Century American 

washed in public ; but the speciality of the American 
"yellow press" ' is the skill which it shows in soiling 
clean linen in private in order to bring it out into the 
streets to wash. 

Postscript — Reference has been made in the forego- 
ing chapter to the British peerage and I now propose 
to have the temerity to enter a serious protest against 
the tone in which even the thoughtful American com- 
monly refers to the House of Lords. I cherish no such 
hopeless ambition as that of inducing the American 
newspaper paragrapher to surrender his traditional 
right to make fun of a British peer on any and every 
occasion. I am speaking now to the more serious teach- 
ers of the American people ; for it is a deplorable fact 
that even the best of those teachers when speaking of 

i Englishmen often ask the meaning of the phrase "the yel- 
low press." The history of it is as follows : In 1895, Mr. W. 
R. Hearst, having had experience as a journalist in California, 
purchased the New York Journal, which was at the time a 
more or less unsuccessful publication, and, spending money 
lavishly, converted it into the most enterprising, as well as 
the most sensational, paper that New York or any other 
American city had ever seen. In catering to the prejudices of 
the mass of the people, he invaded the province of the New 
York World. In the " war " between the two which followed, 
one began and the other immediately adopted the plan of 
using yellow ink in the printing of certain cartoons (or pictures 
of the Ally Sloper type) with which they adorned certain pages 
of their Sunday editions especially. The term "yellow press" 
was applied at first only to those two papers, but soon ex- 
tended to include other publications which copied their gen- 
eral style. The yellow ink was, I believe, actually first 
employed by the World ; but the Journal was the aggressor in 
the fight and in most particulars it was that paper which set 
the pace, and it, or Mr. Hearst, rightly bears the responsibility 
for the creation of yellow journalism. 



Commercial Morality 343 

the House of Lords use language which is generally 
flippant, nearly always contemptuous, and not uncom- 
monly uninformed. 

My own belief (and I think it is that of the majority of 
thinking Englishmen) is that if the discussion in the 
House of Lords on any large question be laid side by side 
with the debate on the same question in the House of 
Commons and the two be read concurrently, it will al- 
most invariably be seen that the speeches in the Upper 
House show a marked superiority in breadth of view, 
expression and grasp of the larger aspects and the un- 
derlying principles of the subject. I believe that such 
a debate in the House of Lords is characterised by more 
ability and thoroughness than the debate on a similar 
question in either the Senate or the House of Repre- 
sentatives. It does not appear from the respective mem- 
bership of the chambers how it could well be otherwise. 

Let us from memory give a list of the more conspic- 
uous members of the present House of Peers whose 
names are likely to be known to American readers, to 
wit : the Dukes of Devonshire and Norfolk ; the Mar- 
quises of Ripon and Landsdowne ; Earls Roberts, Rose- 
bery, Elgin, Northbrook, Crewe, Carrington, Cromer, 
Kimberley, Minto, Halsbury, Spencer ; Viscounts, 
Wolseley, Groschen, Esher, Kitchener of Khartoum, 
St. Aldwyn (Hicks-Beach), Milner, Cross ; the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London; Lords 
Lister, Alverstone, Curzon of Kedleston, Mount Ste- 
phen, Strathcona and Mount Royal, Avebury, Loreburn, 
and Rayleigh. Let me emphasise the fact that this is 
not intended to be a list of the ablest members of the 
House, but only a list of able members something of 
whose reputation and achievements is likely to be 



344 The Twentieth Century American 

known to the intelligent American reader. If the list 
were being compiled for English readers, it would have 
to be twice as long ; but, as it stands, I submit that it is 
a list which cannot approximately be paralleled from 
among the members of the House of Commons or from 
among the members of the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives combined. I take it to be incontrovertible 
that a list representing such eminence and so great 
accomplishment in so many fields (theology, states- 
manship, war, literature, government, science, and 
affairs) could not be produced from the legislative 
chambers of any single country in the world. 

The mistake which Americans make is that they con- 
fuse the hereditary principle with the House of Lords. 
The former is, of course, spurned by every good Amer- 
ican and no one denies his right to express his disap- 
proval thereof in such terms as he sees fit. But few 
Americans appear to make sufficient allowance for the 
fact that whatever the House of Lords suffers at any 
given time by the necessary inclusion among its mem- 
bers (as a result of its hereditary constitution) of a pro- 
portion of men who are quite unfit to be members of 
any legislative body (and these are the members of the 
British peerage with whom America is most familiar) is 
much more than counterbalanced by the ability to intro- 
duce into the membership a continuous current of the 
most distinguished and capable men in every field of ac- 
tivity, whose services could not otherwise (and cannot in 
the United States) be similarly commanded by the State. 

We have seen how in the United States a man can 
only win his way to the House of Representatives, and 
hardly more easily to the Senate, without earning the 
favour of the local politicians and "bosses " of his con- 



Commercial Morality 345 

stituency, and how, when he is elected, his tenure of 
office is likely to be short and must be always precarious. 
It is probable that in the United States not one of the 
distinguished men whose names are given in the above 
list would (with the possible exception of two or three 
who have devoted their lives to politics) be included 
in either chamber. They would, so far as public serv- 
ice is concerned (unless they were given cabinet posi- 
tions or held seats upon the bench), be lost to the State. 
It is, of course, impossible that Americans should keep 
in touch with the proceedings of the House of Lords ; 
nor is there any reason why they should. The number 
of Americans, resident at home, who in the course of 
their lives have read in extenso any single debate in 
that House must be extremely small ; and first-hand 
knowledge of the House Americans can hardly have. 
Then, of the English publicists or statesmen who visit 
the United States it is perhaps inevitable that those 
whose conversation on political topics Americans 
(especially American economic thinkers and sociolo- 
gists) should find most congenial are those of an ad- 
vanced Liberal or Eadical — even semi-Republican — 
complexion. I have chanced to have the opportunity 
of seeing how much certain American economists of 
the rising school (which has done such admirable work 
as a whole) have been influenced by the views of par- 
ticular Englishmen of this class. I should like to 
mention names, but not a few readers will be able 
to supply them for themselves. It has not appeared to 
occur to the American disciples of these men that the 
views which they impart on English political subjects 
are purely partisan, and generally very extreme, views. 
Their opinions of the House of Lords no more repre- 



346 The Twentieth Century American 

sent the judgment of England on the subject than the 
opinions of an extreme Free Trade Democrat represent 
the views of America on the subject of Protection. 

Merely as a matter of manners and good taste, it 
would, I think, be well if Americans endeavoured to 
arrive at and express a better understanding of the 
legislative work of the Lords. Englishmen have not 
much more regard for the principle of a quadrennially 
elected President than Americans have for an heredi- 
tary aristocracy ; but they do not habitually per- 
mit that lack of regard to degenerate into the use of 
contemptuous language about individual Presidents. 
Even in contemplating the result of what seems to 
them so preposterous a system as that of electing a 
judiciary by popular party vote, Englishmen have 
generally confined themselves to a complimentary ex- 
pression of surprise that the results are not worse than 
they are. Surely, while being as truculent as they 
please in their attitude towards the hereditary principle, 
it would be well if Americans would similarly endeav- 
our to dissociate their detestation of that principle from 
their feelings for the actual personnel of the House of 
Lords. There is a good deal both in the constitution 
and work of the House to command the respect even 
of the citizens of a republic. 

I address this protest directly to American economic 
and sociological writers in the hope that, recognising that 
it comes from one who is not unsympathetic, some of 
them may be influenced to speak less heedlessly on the 
subject than is their wont. I may add that these remarks 
are suggested by certain passages in the recently pub- 
lished book of an American author for whom, else- 
where in this volume, I express, as I feel, sincere respect. 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Growth of Honesty 

The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon — America's Resemblance 
to Japan — A German View — Can Americans Lie ? — Honesty as 
the Best Policy — Religious Sentiment— Moral and Immoral 
Railway Managers — A Struggle for Self-Preservation — Gentle- 
men in Business — Peculation among Railway Servants — How 
the Old Order Changes, Yielding Place to New — The Strain 
on British Machinery — Americans as Story -Tellers — The 
Incredibility of the Actual. 

My desire is to contribute, if possible, something 
towards the establishment of a better understanding 
between the two peoples by correcting certain mis- 
apprehensions which exist in the mind of each in 
regard to the other. At the present moment we are 
concerned with the particular misapprehension which 
exists in the English mind in regard to the commercial 
ethics — the average level of common honesty — in the 
masses of American business men. I have endeavoured 
to show, first, that the majority of Englishmen have, 
even though unconsciously, a fundamental misconcep- 
tion of the character of the American people, arising 
primarily from the absence of a recognised aristocracy 
in the United States : —that, in fact, the two peoples 
are, in the construction of their social fabrics, much 
more alike than the Englishman generally assumes. 
I have endeavoured to show, next, that if we were 

347 



34^ The Twentieth Century American 

entirely without any knowledge of, or any prejudices 
in regard to, the code of commercial ethics at present 
existing in either country, but had to deduce for our- 
selves a priori from what we knew of the part which 
commerce and business played in the social life of the 
two countries the probable degree of morality which 
would be found in the respective codes, we should be 
forced to look for a higher standard in the United 
States than in England. We have seen how it comes 
that Englishmen have, justifiably and even unavoid- 
ably, acquired the erroneous notions which they have 
acquired, first, from the fact that, in the rough days of 
the past, American business morality was, at least in 
certain parts of the country, looser than that which 
prevailed in the older-established and better constituted 
society of the England of the same day (and in the 
older communities of the United States itself) ; and, 
second, from the fact that the chief channel through 
which Englishmen must necessarily derive their con- 
temporary ideas on the subject, namely, the American 
press, is, by reason of qualities peculiar to itself, not 
to be trusted to correct the misapprehensions which 
exist. Finally, we have seen that there exist in cer- 
tain American minds some mistaken notions, not much 
dissimilar in character to those which I am trying to 
point out are present in the minds of Englishmen, 
about the character of a considerable section of the 
people of Great Britain ; and if Americans can be thus 
mistaken about England, there is no inherent im- 
probability in the suggestion that Englishmen may be 
analogously mistaken about the United States. 

The English people has had abundant justification 
in the past for arriving at the conclusion that in many 



The Growth of Honesty 349 

of the qualities which go to make a great and manly 
race it stands first among the peoples of the earth. 
The belief of Englishmen in their own moral superior- 
ity as a people is justified by the course of history, 
and is proven every day afresh by the attitudes of 
other races, — especially b} r the behaviour in their 
choice of friends, when compelled to choose as between 
England and other European powers, of the peoples 
more or less unlike the Anglo-Saxon in their civilisa- 
tions in the remoter corners of the world. It is to the 
eternal honour of England that in countless out-of-the- 
way places, peoples more or less savage have learned 
to accept the word of a British official or trader as 
a thing to be trusted, and have grown quick to dis- 
tinguish between him and his rivals of other European 
nationalities. There has been abundant testimony to 
the respect which the British character has won from 
the world, — from the frank admiration of the Prince- 
Chancellor for the " Parole de Gentleman " to the un- 
shakable confidence of the far red Indian in the faith 
of a "King George Man"; from the trust of an Indian 
native in the word of a Sahib to the dying injunction 
to his successor of one of the greatest of the Afghan 
Ameers: "Trust the English. Do not fight them. 
They are good friends and bad enemies." l And the 

1 Even up to a quarter of a century ago, there was at least 
one corner of the United States, near to the Canadian border, 
•where among Indians not yet rounded up or blanketed the 
old feeling still existed, so that an Englishman, proclaiming 
himself a "King George Man," could go and hunt and fish 
safely, sure of the friendship and protection of the red man, 
while an American would not have been safe for a night. The 
subject of the relations between the British and the Indian 
tribes in Revolutionary times has, of course, been provocative 



35° The Twentieth Century American 

most solemn oath, I believe, which an Arab can take 
is to swear that what he says is as " true as the word 
of an Englishman." 

But, granting all that has happened in the past, and 
recognising that British honour and the sacredness of 
the British word have stood above those of any other 
peoples, the American nation of to-day is a new factor 
in the situation. It did not exist at the time when the 
old comparisons were made. I have suggested else- 
where that the popular American contempt for the 
English climate is only an inheritance of the opinions 
based on a comparison of that climate with the climates 
of Southern Europe. If the climate of certain parts — 
of the greater part — of the United States had then 
been a factor to be taken into consideration, English 
skies would have had at least one fellow to share with 
them the opprobrium of the world. So in the matter 
of commercial morality ; we are thinking and speaking 
in terms of a day that has gone, when other standards 
governed. 

Englishmen have been very willing, within the last 
year or two, to believe in the revolution which has 
taken place in the character of another people, less 

of much bitterness in the hearts of Americans ; but happily 
their own histoi - ians of a later day have shown that this bitter- 
ness has only been partially justified. There was not much to 
choose between Patriots and Loyalists. Those who know the 
Indian know also that the universal liking for the Englishman 
cannot have rested only on motives of political expediency or 
from temporary alliances made in Revolutionary times. They 
must have had abundant proof of the loyalty and trust worthiness 
of Englishmen before so deep-rooted a sentiment could have 
been created. The contrast, of course, was not with the Amer- 
ican colonist, but with the French. The colonists, too, were 
King George Men once. 



The Growth of Honesty 351 

akin to them than the Americans and farther away. 
The promptitude with which the British masses have 
accepted the fact that, in certain of the virtues on 
which Englishmen have most peculiarly prided them- 
selves in the past, the Japanese are their superiors, has 
been curiously un-British. There should be no greater 
difficulty in believing that another revolution, much 
more gradual and less picturesque, and by so much the 
more easily credible, has taken place in the American 
character. The evidence in favour of the one is, rightly 
viewed, no less strong than that in favour of the other. 
It would have been impossible for the Japanese to have 
carried on the recent war as they did had they not 
been possessed of the virtues of courage and patriotism 
in the highest degree. It would have been equally 
impossible for the Americans to have built up their 
immense trade in competition with the great commer- 
cial powers of the world, unless they had in an equally 
high degree possessed the virtue of commercial honesty. 
No one ought to know better than the English business 
man that a great national commercial fabric is not built 
up by fraud or trickery. 

On this subject Professor Miinsterberg, 1 striving to 

1 Yes; I am aware that elsewhere I quote Professor Miinster- 
berg without enthusiasm, but on another class of subject. 
Except for the limitations which his national characteristics 
and upbringing impose upon him (and for the fact that he 
seems to be unacquainted with the West) the Professor has 
written a just and clear-sighted estimate of the American 
character. We do not look to a German for a proper under- 
standing of the sporting instinct, as British and Americans 
understand it, nor perhaps for views that will coincide with 
ours on the subject of morality in the youth of either sex. But 
the laws of common honesty are the same in all countries. A 



35 2 The Twentieth Century American 

eradicate from the minds of his German countrymen 
the same tendency to underestimate the honesty of 
American business men, says (and let me say that 
neither my opinion, nor the form in which it is ex- 
pressed, was borrowed from him): "It is naive to 
suppose that the economic strength of America has 
been built up through underhanded competition, with- 
out respect to law or justice, and impelled by nothing 
but a barbarous and purely material ambition. One 
might better suppose that the twenty -story office build- 
ings on lower Broadway are supported by the flag-stones 
in the street. . . . The colossal fabric of American 
industry is able to tower so high only because it has 
its foundations on the hard rock of honest conviction." 
" It has been well said," says the same author, "that 
the American has no talent for lying, and distrust of a 
man's word strikes the Yankee as specifically Euro- 
pean." Now in England " an American lie " has 
stood almost as a proverb ; yet the German writer is 
entirely in earnest, though personally I do not agree 
with him. He sees the symptoms, but the diagnosis is 
wrong. The American has an excellent talent for ly- 
ing, but in business he has learned that falsehood and 
deception are poor commercial weapons. Business 
which is obtained by fraud, any American will tell 
you, " does n't stick " ; and as every American in his 
business is looking always to the future, he prefers, 
merely as a matter of prudence, that his Jbundations 
shall be sound. 

German is as well able to estimate the commercial morality of 
a people as an Englishman, however little he may be qualified 
to talk about their games or about the nuances in the mascu- 
line attitude towards women. 



The Growth of Honesty 353 

All society is a struggle for the survival of the fit- 
test ; and in crude and early forms of society, it is the 
strongest who proves himself most fit In savage 
communities — and Europe was savage until after the 
feudal days — it is the big man and brutal who comes 
to the top. In the savage days of American commerce, 
which, at least for the West, ended only a generation 
back, it was too often the man who could go out and sub- 
due the wilderness and beat down opposition, who rode 
rough-shod over his competitors and used whatever 
weapons, whether of mere brute strength or fraud, with 
the greatest ferocity and unscrupulousness, who made 
his mark and his fortune. But in a settled and com- 
plex commercial community it is no longer the strong- 
est who is most fit ; it is the most honest. The American 
commercial community as a whole, in spite of occa- 
sional exceptions and in defiance of the cynicism of the 
press, has grasped this fact and has accepted the 
business standards of the world at large. 

Let me not be interpreted as implying that there are 
any fewer Americans than there are Englishmen who 
live rightly from the fear of God or for the sake of their 
own self-respect The conclusion of most observers 
has been that the American people is more religious 
than the English, that the temperament, more nervous 
and more emotional, is more susceptible to religious 
influence. It may be so. It is a subject on which the 
evidence is necessarily so intangible — on which an in- 
dividual judgment is likely to be so entirely dependent 
on individual observation in a narrow field — that com- 
parison becomes extremely difficult My own opinion 
would be that there is at least as much real religious 
feeling in England as in the United States, and certainly 



354 The Twentieth Century American 

more in Scotland than in either ; but that the churches 
in America are more active as organisations and more 
efficient agents in behalf of morality. 

But we are now speaking of the business community 
as a whole, and the force which ultimately keeps the 
ethics of every business community pure is, I imagine, 
the same, namely that without honesty the community 
itself cannot live or prosper and that, with normal 
ability, he who is most honest prospers most Amer- 
ican business was dishonest before society had settled 
down and knitted itself together. 

The change which has come over the American 
business world can perhaps best be made clear to Eng- 
lish readers by taking a single example ; and it must 
necessarily be an example from a field with which I 
am familiar. 

There is in my possession an interesting document, 
being one of the (I think) two original manuscript 
copies of the famous " Gentleman's Agreement, ' bear- 
ing the signatures of the parties thereto, which was 
entered into by the Presidents or Chairmen of a num- 
ber of railway companies at Mr. Pierpont Morgan's 
house in New York in 1891. In the year following 
the signing of the Agreement, I was in London in 
connection with affairs which necessitated rather pro- 
longed interviews with many of the Chairmen or Gen- 
eral Managers of the British railways, — Sir George 
Findlay, Sir Edward Watkin, Mr. J. Staats Forbes, and 
others. With all of them the mutual relations exist- 
ing between railway companies in the two countries 
respectively formed one of the chief topics of our con- 
versations, and that at that time the good faith and 



The Growth of Honesty 355 

loyalty of attitude of one company towards another 
were much greater in England than in America it is 
not possible to question. British companies are sub- 
ject to a restraining influence which does not exist in 
the United States, in the parliamentary control which 
is exercised over them. Every company of any size 
has, with more or less frequency, to go to Parliament 
for new powers or privileges, and any Chairman or 
Board of Directors which established a reputation for 
untrustworthiness in dealings with other companies 
would probably be able to expect few favours from the 
next Parliamentary Committee. But (although the 
two last of the gentlemen whose names I have men- 
tioned were notoriously parties to a peculiarly bitter 
railway war) I believe that the motives which have 
chiefly operated to make the managers of English com- 
panies observe faith with each other better than the 
American have ever succeeded in doing, are chiefly the 
traditional motives of a high sense of personal hon- 
our — the fact that they were gentlemen first and 
business men afterwards. 

The circumstances which led up to the formation of 
the Gentlemen's Agreement were almost inconceivable 
to English railway operators. The railways, it must 
always be borne in mind, have been the chief civilisers 
of the American continent. It is by their instrumen- 
tality that the Great American Desert of half a century 
ago is to-day among the richest and most prosperous 
agricultural countries in the world. The railways have 
always thrust out ahead of the settler into whatever 
territory, by reason of the potential fertility of its soil 
or for other causes, has held out promise of some day 
becoming populated. Along the railway the popula- 



35 6 The Twentieth Century American 

tion has then flowed. In forcing its way westward 
each company in its course has sought to tap with its 
lines the richest strips of territory : all alike endeavoured 
to obtain a share of the traffic originating from a point 
where a thriving town was already established or topo- 
graphical conditions pointed out a promising site. As 
the American laws impose practically no restrictions 
on railway construction it necessarily followed that 
certain districts and certain favourable strategic points 
were invaded by more lines than could possibly be 
justified either by the traffic of the moment or the 
prospective traffic of many years to come. This was 
conspicuously the case in the region Northwestward 
from Chicago. Business which might have furnished 
a reasonable revenue to two companies was called upon 
to support six or seven and the competition for that 
business became intense, — all the more intense because, 
unlike English railway companies, few American rail- 
ways in their early days have had any material reserve 
of capital to draw upon. They have had to earn their 
living as they went, out of current receipts, or submit 
to liquidation. 

The officials in charge of the Traffic Departments of 
each company had to justify their retention in their 
positions by somehow getting more than their share of 
the business, and the temptations to offer whatever in- 
ducements were necessary to get that business amounted 
almost to compulsion. Without it, not the particular 
official only, but his company, would be extinguished. 
The situation was further aggravated by the fact that 
the goods that were to be carried were largely staples 
shipped in large quantities by individual shippers — 
millers, owners of packing houses, mining companies 



The Growth of Honesty 357 

from the one end, and coal and oil companies from the 
other. One of these companies might be able to offer 
a railway more business in the course of a year than it 
could hope to get from all the small traders on its lines 
combined — enough to amount almost to affluence if 
it could be secured at the regularly authorised rates. 
The keenness of the competition to secure the patron- 
age of these large shippers can be imagined ; for it 
was, between the companies, a struggle for actual ex- 
istence. All that the shipper had to do was to wait 
while the companies underbid each other, each in turn 
cutting off a slice from the margin of profit that would 
result from the carrying of the traffic until, not infre- 
quently and in some notorious cases, not only was that 
margin entirely whittled away but the traffic was 
finally carried at a figure which meant a heavy loss to 
the carrier. The extent to which the Standard Oil 
Company has profited by this necessity on the part of 
the railways to get the business of a large shipping 
concern at almost any price, rather than allow its cars 
and motive power to remain idle, has been made 
sufficiently public. 

In some measure the companies were able to protect 
themselves by the making of pooling (or joint-purse) 
arrangements between themselves ; but the enactment 
of the Interstate Commerce Law in 1887 made pooling 
illegal. The companies endeavoured to frame agree- 
ments which would not be repugnant to the law but 
would take the place of the pools ; but it was impos- 
sible to attach any penalties to infringements of such 
agreements and under pressure of the necessity of self- 
preservation, no agreement, however solemnly entered 
into, was strong enough to restrain the parties. The 



35 8 The Twentieth Century American 

Passenger Agents framed agreements to control the 
passenger traffic and the Freight Agents made agree- 
ments to control the goods traffic, and both were 
equally futile. Then the Traffic Managers made agree- 
ments to cover both classes of business, which held 
no longer than the others. So the General Managers 
tried their hands. But the inexorable exigencies of 
the situation remained. Each official was still con- 
fronted with the same dilemma : he must either secure 
more business than he was entitled to or he — and his 
company — must starve. And the agreements made 
by General Managers bound no better than those which 
Passenger Agents or Traffic Managers had made before. 
Then it was that the Gentlemen stepped in. 

The Gentlemen, it should be explained, were the 
Presidents and Chairmen of the Boards of the respec- 
tive companies. They, it was hoped, would be able 
to reach an agreement which, if once their names were 
signed to it, would hold. The meeting, as has been 
said, was held at Mr. Pierpont Morgan's house ' and an 
agreement was in fact arrived at and signed, as has 
been said, in duplicate. It is lamentable to have to 
record that that agreement — except in so far as it set 
a precedent for other meetings of the same gentlemen, 
which in turn led to others out of which finally grew 

1 That meeting has an incidental historical interest from the 
fact that it was then that Mr. Morgan first stepped into the 
public view as a financial power. Up to that time, his name 
was not particularly well known outside of New York or the 
financial circles immediately connected with New York. Most 
Western papers found it necessary to explain to their readers 
(if they could) who the Mr. Morgan was at whose house the 
meeting was being held. 



The Growth of Honesty 359 

large movements in the direction of joint ownerships 
and consolidations of interests which have helped 
materially to make the conditions more tolerable — 
except for that, the Gentlemen's Agreement did no 
more good, and it lasted not appreciably longer, than 
any of the others which had been made by mere 
officials. 

Englishmen will all agree that it is unthinkable that 
the Chairmen of the great British railway companies 
could meet and give their words as gentlemen that each 
of their companies would observe certain rules in the 
conduct of its business and that a few weeks thereafter 
it should become evident that no single company was 
keeping the word so pledged. But it would be just 
as absurd to question the personal integrity or sense 
of honour of such men as Mr. Marvin Hughitt, Mr. E. 
W. Winter, Mr. W. H. Truesdale, and the others, as 
it would be to question that of the most upright man 
in England. The fact is that the conditions are almost 
unthinkable to Englishmen. No company, in becom- 
ing party to the agreement, had surrendered its right to 
retaliate when another violated the provisions. The act- 
ual conduct of the business of the companies — the 
quoting of the rates to secure the traffic — was in the 
hands of a host of subordinate officials, and when a rate 
is cut it is not cut openly, but in secret and by circuit- 
ous devices. It was, on subsequent investigation, 
always impossible to tell where the demoralisation 
had begun, amid the cloud of charges, counter-charges, 
and denials. There was not one of the subordinate 
officials but declared (and seemingly proved) that he 
had acted only in retaliation and self-defence. As 
there was no way of obtaining evidence from the 



360 The Twentieth Century American 

shippers, in whose favour the concessions had been 
made, it was impossible to sift out the truth. Each 
Chairman or President could only say that he had entire 
confidence in his own staff. There was no visible 
remedy except to discharge the entire membership of 
the Traffic Departments of all the companies simul- 
taneously and get new men, to the number of several 
hundreds, who would be no better able to accomplish 
the impossible than their predecessors. 

My reason for going into this, I fear, somewhat 
tedious narration is that British distrust of American 
commercial honesty was originally created, perhaps, 
more than by anything else, by the scandals which 
were notoriously associated with the early history of 
railways in the United States. It is not desired here 
either to insist on the occurrence of those scandals or 
to palliate them. The point is that the conditions 
which made those scandals possible (of which the in- 
capacity on the part of the North-western lines to keep 
faith with each other may be regarded as symptomatic) 
were concomitants of a particular stage only in the 
development of the country. Competition must al- 
ways exist in any business community; but in the 
desperate form of a breathless, day-to-day struggle for 
bare existence it need only exist among railway com- 
panies where lines have been built in excess of the 
needs of the population. With the increase in popu- 
lation and the growth of trade the asperity of the con- 
ditions necessarily becomes mitigated, until at last, 
when the traffic has assumed proportions which will 
afford all competitors alike a reasonable profit on their 
shares, the management ceases to be exposed to any 



The Growth of Honesty 361 

more temptation than besets the Boards of the great 
British companies. Not a few railway companies in 
the United States have arrived at that delectable con- 
dition — are indeed now more happily circumstanced 
than any English company — and among them are some 
the names of which, not many years ago, were mere 
synonyms for dishonesty. In the North-western terri- 
tory of which I have spoken the fact that the current 
values of all railway shares had on the average in- 
creased (until the occurrence of the financial crisis of 
the close of 1907) by about three hundred per cent, in 
the last ten years is eloquent. 

In the old days the wrong-doing which was rampant, 
through excess of opportunity and more than abundant 
temptation, in the higher circles, ran also through all 
grades of the service ; and there was one case at least 
of a railway company which used in fact to have to 
discharge all its servants of a certain class at intervals 
of once a month or thereabouts. The Northern Pacific 
Railway line was opened across the continent in 1883, 
and during the next twelve months it was my fortune 
to have to travel over the western portion of the road 
somewhat frequently. The company had a regularly 
established tariff of charges, and tickets from any one 
station to another could be bought at the booking 
offices just as on any other railway line in America or 
England. But few people bought tickets. The line 
was divided, of course, into divisions, of so many 
hundreds of miles each, the train being in charge of 
one conductor (or guard) to the end of his division, 
where he turned it over to his successor for the next 
division. It was the business of the conductor to take 
up the tickets, or collect the fares, while the train was 



362 The Twentieth Century American 

running, and it was well understood among regular 
passengers on the line that each conductor expected to 
receive one dollar to the end of his division, no matter 
at what point a passenger entered the train. The con- 
ductor merely walked through the cars collecting silver 
dollars, of which he subsequently apportioned to the 
treasury of the company as many as he saw fit. They 
were probably not many. 

On one occasion I stood at a booking-office and, 
speaking through the small window, asked the clerk 
for a ticket to a certain place. The conductor of the 
train, already waiting in the station, had strolled into 
the office and heard my request. 

" Don't you buy a ticket ! " said he to me. " I can 
let you travel cheaper than he can, can't I, Bill ? " — 
this last being addressed to the clerk behind the win- 
dow ; and Bill looked out through the hole and said 
he guessed that was so. 

The company, as I have said, used to discharge its 
conductors with regularity, or they resigned, at inter- 
vals depending on the periods at which accounts were 
made up, but it was said in those days that there was 
not a town between the Mississippi and the Pacific 
Coast which did not contain a drinking saloon owned 
by an ex-Northern Pacific conductor, and established 
out of the profits that he had made during his brief 
term of service. 

In the American railway carriages, the method of 
communication between passengers and the engine, in 
case of emergency, is by what is known as the " bell- 
cord " which runs from end to end of the train, sus- 
pended from the middle of the ceiling of each car in a 
series of swinging rings. The cord sways loosely in 



The Growth of Honesty 363 

the air to each motion of the train like a slackened 
clothes-line in a gale. On the Atchison, Topeka, and 
Santa Fe Railway the story used to be told that at the 
end of the day the conductors would toss each coin re- 
ceived into the air to see if it would balance on the 
bell-cord. The coins which balanced went to the 
company ; those which did not, the conductor took as 
his own. 

That, be it noted, was the state of affairs some 
twenty-four years ago. I question if there is much 
more peculation on the part of the employees of the 
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe to-day than there is 
on the part of the servants of the Great Western of 
England or any other British company. 

The place where the conductor advised me not to 
buy a ticket had then a few yards of planking laid on 
the prairie for a platform and a small shed as a station 
building. The town consisted of three or four brick 
buildings and a huddle of wooden shanties. To-day 
it is one of the twenty most populous cities in the 
United States with tall office buildings, broad busy 
streets, and sumptuous private residences. I used to 
have excellent trout-fishing in what is now the centre 
of a great town. Where the air to-day is filled with 
the hum of wheels and the roar of machinery, then 
was only open prairie innocent of any evidence of 
human occupation beyond some three or four things 
like dog-kennels badly built of loose lattice-work 
on the river's bank. These were the red Indians' 
Turkish baths. 

The old code of morality has vanished with the red 
Indian and the trout-fishing. In the early days of 
that town there used to be nobody to maintain public 



364 The Twentieth Century American 

order but an efficient Vigilance Committee, which ex- 
ecuted j ustice by the simple process of hanging persons 
whom the public disliked, and which was still in nom- 
inal existence when I was there. Now the city has 
the proper complement of courts, from the United 
States Court downwards, and a bar which has already 
furnished one or two members to the United States 
Senate. Of course this has happened in the very far 
West but the change which has come over New York 
in the same length of time is no less astonishing if less 
picturesque. It is as unjust to compare the morals or 
manners of the American people of to-day with those 
of even three decades ago as it would be to compare' 
the state of twentieth-century society in New Zealand 
with the old convict days. In one generation Japan 
has stepped from the days of feudalism to the twen- 
tieth century. America, in all that goes to constitute 
civilisation, has in the last twenty-five years jumped, 
according to European canons, at least a hundred. 

Certain outward manifestations of the change which 
has been wrought, the peoples of Europe have been 
unable to ignore ; — the immense growth in the power 
of the United States as a nation, her invasion of the 
markets of the world even in lines wherein, twenty 
years ago, the internal markets of America herself were 
at the mercy of British manufacturers, the splendid 
generosity which individual citizens of the United 
States are showing in buying wherever they can all 
that is most beautiful or precious among the treasures 
of the Old World for the enrichment of their museums 
and galleries at home — these things the people of 
Europe cannot help but see. It would be well if they 
would strive also to understand the development of 



The Growth of Honesty 365 

the moral forces which underlies these things, which 
alone has made them possible. 

What has been the course of events in England in 
the same period? I have already said that I believe 
that Englishmen justly earned the reputation of being 
the most upright of all peoples in their commercial 
dealings ; and for the sake of the context perhaps 
Americans who have had little opportunity of gauging 
the opinions of the world will accept it as true. It is 
probable that the world has seen no finer set of men 
engaged in commerce than those who laid the founda- 
tions of England's commercial greatness ; and I imagine 
that there are more honest men in England to-day than 
ever there were — more men of what is, it will be 
noticed, instructively called " old-fashioned " honesty. 
Yet no one will be quicker than just one of these " old- 
fashioned " honest men to declare that the standard of 
commercial morality in England is deteriorating. 

The truth is that a vast new trading community has 
sprung up with new ideas which no longer accepts the 
old canons or submits to the old authority. The old 
maxims pass current ; there is the same talk of honest 
goods and honest methods, but under stress of keener 
competition and the pressure of the more rapid move- 
ment of modern life, there is more temptation to allow 
products to deteriorate, greater difficulty in living 
always up to the old rigid standards. The words 
" English made " no longer carry, even to English 
minds, the old guarantee of excellence. 

In no small measure it may be that it is the example 
and influence of America itself which is working the 
mischief ; which by no means implies that American 



366 The Twentieth Century American 

example and influence must in themselves be bad. 
American methods, both in the production and sale of 
goods, might be wholly good, but the attempt to graft 
them upon established English practice might have 
nothing but deplorable results. It is not necessarily 
the fault of the new wine if old bottles fail to hold it. 
One factory may have the capacity to turn out one 
thousand of a given article, all of the highest quality 
and workmanship, per diem. If a factory with one 
tenth the capacity strains itself to compete and turns 
out the same number of articles of the same kind in 
the same time, something will be wrong with the quality 
of those articles. I am not prepared to say that in any 
given line English manufacturers are overstraining the 
capacity of their plants to the sacrifice of the quality 
of their goods in their effort to keep pace with Ameri- 
can rate of production ; but I do most earnestly believe 
that something analogous to it is happening in the 
commercial field as a whole, and that neither English 
commercial morality nor the quality of English-made 
goods has been improved by the necessity of meeting 
the intense competition of the world-markets to-day, 
with an industrial organisation which grew up under 
other and more leisurely conditions. 

Postscript. — Not necessarily as a serious contribu- 
tion to my argument but rather as a gloss on Professor 
Munsterberg's remark that the American has no talent 
for lying, I have often wondered how far the Americans' 
reputation for veracity has been injured by their ability 
as story-tellers. " Story " it must be remembered is 
used in two senses. The American has the reputation 
of being the best narrator in the world; and he loves 



The Growth of Honesty 367 

to narrate about his own country — especially the big 
things in it. In nine cases out of ten, when he is 
speaking of those big things, he is conscientiously 
truthful ; but not seldom it happens that what may be 
a mere commonplace to the American seems incredible 
to the English listener unacquainted with the United 
States and unable to give the facts as narrated their 
due proportion in the landscape. 

More than a quarter of a century ago, when electric 
light was still a very new thing to Londoners, an 
American casually told myself and three or four 
others that the small town from which he came in the 
far Northwest of America was lighted entirely by a 
coronal of electric lights of some prodigious candle- 
power on the top of a mast, erected in the centre of the 
town, of a, to us, incredible height It was, at the 
time, quite unbelievable; but in less than a year 
chance took me all the way to that identical little town 
in the far Northwest, and what the American had said 
was strictly true — true, I doubt not, to a single candle- 
power and to a fraction of a foot of mast. And a 
costly and indifferent method of lighting, for a whole 
town, it may be remarked, it was. 

In an earlier stage of my youth I lost all confidence 
in an elderly and eminently respectable friend of the 
family who had travelled much because he once in- 
formed me that the Japanese watered their horses out 
of spoons. Of course I knew that the old gentleman 
was a liar. 

An American travelling in an English railway car- 
riage fell into conversation with the other occupants, 
who were Englishmen. Among divers pieces of infor- 
mation about things in the United States which he 



368 The Twentieth Century American 

gave them he told (it was at the time when the steel 
construction of high buildings was still a novelty) of a 
twenty -storey " sky-scraper " which he passed daily on 
his way to and from his office on which, to save time, 
the walls were being put up simultaneously at, per- 
haps, the second, eighth, and fifteenth floors, working 
upwards from each point, the intervening floors being 
in the meanwhile left untouched. He explained that, 
in the system of steel construction, the walls did not 
support the building ; that being done by the skeleton 
framework of metal, on which the walls were subse- 
quently hung as a screen. They might, theoretically, 
be of paper ; though as a matter of fact the material 
used was generally terra-cotta or some fire- proof brick. 
The American said that it was queer to see a house 
being built at the eighth storey in midair, as it were, 
with nothing but the thin steel supports and open sky 
below. 

" I should imagine it would look very queer," said 
the Englishman whom he was addressing, with obvious 
coolness ; and the American was entirely aware that 
every person in that carriage regarded him as a typical 
American liar. Time passed and the carriage relapsed 
into silence, each of the occupants becoming immersed 
in such reading-matter as he had with him. Suddenly 
one of them aroused the others with the ejaculation : 

" By Jove ! If here is n't a picture of that very 
building you were talking of ! " 

It was a Graphic or Illustrated London News, or some 
other such undoubtedly trustworthy London paper 
which he was reading, and he passed it round for the 
inspection of the rest of the company. The American 
looked at it. It was not his particular building but it 



The Growth of Honesty 369 

did as well, and there was the photograph before them, 
with the walls complete, to window casing and every 
detail of ornament, on the eighth and ninth floors, 
while not a brick had been laid from the second storey 
to the seventh. A god from the machine had inter- 
vened to save the American's reputation. Often have 
I seen incredulity steal over the faces of a well-bred 
company in England at some statement from an Amer- 
ican of a fact in itself commonplace enough, when no 
such providential corroboration was forthcoming. 

Curiously enough, the true Yankee in America, 
especially of the rural districts, has the same distrust 
of the veracity of the Western American as the Eng- 
lishman generally has of the Yankee himself (in which 
he includes all Americans). I had been living for 
some years in Minnesota when, standing one day 
on the platform of the railway station at, I think, 
Schenectady, in New York State, I was addressed by 
one who was evidently a farmer in the neighbourhood. 
Learning that I had just come from Minnesota he re- 
ferred to the two towns of St. Paul and Minneapolis. 
" Eight lively towns,'' he had heard them to be. " And 
how many people might there be in the two together? " 
he asked. "About a quarter of a million," I replied 
— the number being some few thousand less than the 
figure given by the last census. The farmer, perhaps, 
had not heard anything of the two towns for ten or a 
dozen years, when their population had been not much 
more than a third of what it had grown to at that time ; 
and he looked at me. He did not say anything ; he 
merely looked at me, long and fixedly. Then he de- 
liberately turned his back and walked to the other 
end of the platform as far as possible from my 



3 7° The Twentieth Century American 

contaminating influence. I was never so explicitly and 
categorically called a liar in my life ; and he doubtless 
went home and told his family of the magnificent 
Western exaggerator whom he had met " down to the 
depot." I fear the American reputation often suffers 
no less unjustly in England. 



CHAPTER XIV 
A Contrast in Principles 

The Commercial Power of the United States — British Work- 
manship — Tin-tacks and Conservatism — A Prophetic French- 
man — Imperialism in Trade — The Anglo-Saxon Spirit — About 
Chaperons — "Insist upon Thyself" — English and American 
Banks — Dealing in Futures — Dog Eat Dog — Two Letters — Com- 
mercial Octopods — Trusts in America and England — The 
Standard Oil Company — And Solicitors — Legal Chaperons — 
The Sanctity of Stamped Paper — Conclusions — American 
Courts of Justice — Do "Honest" Traders Exist? 

The Englishman, even the Englishman with indus- 
trial experience and commercial training, generally, 
when he makes a short visit to the United States, 
comes away with a certain distrust of the stability of 
the American commercial fabric — a distrust which he 
cannot altogether explain to himself. The rapidity of 
movement, the vastness of the results, these things are 
before his eyes ; but there insists on obtruding itself 
a sense of unsubstantiality. Habituated to English 
surroundings, with their ages-old traditions, the rugged 
deep-rooted institutions, the deliberate revolutions of 
all the fly-wheels of a long-constituted society, he can- 
not believe that the mushroom establishments, thrust 
up as it were from the soil of a continent which is yet 
one half but partially broken wilderness, have per- 
manence. He cannot deny the magnitude or the ex- 
cellence of the work that is being done now, at this 

371 



37 2 The Twentieth Century American 

moment, under his eyes ; but it all has too much the 
seeming of unreality, as though suspended in midair, 
unsupported. He misses the foundations of centuries 
of civilisation below and the lines of shafting running 
back into the past. Often, it is to be feared, having 
all his life been accustomed to sec power exerted only 
in cumbersome processes and through old-fashioned 
channels, he has come to regard the cumbersomeness 
and the antiquity as necessary conditions of such ex- 
ertion — nay, even to confuse them with the sources of 
the power themselves. It will be remembered that the 
first pig that was roasted in China was roasted by 
the accidental burning down of a house ; and for a 
long time the Chinese supposed that only by burning 
down a house was it possible to come at roast pig. 
Finally arose a great philosopher (" like our Locke ") 
who discovered that it was not necessary to burn 
houses, but that pigs might be cooked by much less 
costly and more rapid methods. Unquestionably many 
of those who had been accustomed to house-burning 
must have looked at the new and summary culinary 
processes with profound distrust. It may even be as- 
serted with confidence that many of the older genera- 
tion died unconverted, though pig-roasting over all 
sorts of makeshift fires had been going on around 
them for some years. 

After a more or less prolonged residence in the 
United States, the Englishman finds his distrust less- 
ening. He in turn becomes accustomed to doing 
without those traditions, those foundations, those lines 
of shafting, which once he considered so essential to 
all sound workmanship. When in due time he returns 
to England he is not seldom amazed to see how many 



A Contrast in Principles 373 

of the things which he was wont to regard as effective 
links in the machinery are really no more than waste 
parts which do but retard the motion and cause loss 
of power. It is not difficult to make machinery so 
complicated that the power exhausts itself in overcom- 
ing the resistance of belts and pulleys and cogs. 

I had lived in the United States for many years before 
I ceased to cling to the notion — which I never hesi- 
tated to impart cheerfully to Americans when occasion 
offered — that though American workmen turned out 
goods that served their purpose well enough, for really 
sound and honest workmanship you had, after all, to 
come to England. It was only after I had been back 
in England and had experience of the ways of English 
workmen once more that doubts began to accumulate. 
English furniture makers told me that England nowa- 
days did not produce such well-made or solid furniture 
as pieces that I showed them from America, and which 
are made in America in wholesale quantities. English 
picture-frame makers marvelled at the costliness of 
material and the excellence of the work in American 
frames. A Sackville Street tailor begged me to leave 
in his hands for a few days longer some clothes which 
he was pressing for me, made in a far Western State, 
in order that he might keep them — where they then 
were — hanging in his work-room as an object-lesson to 
his men in how work ought to be done. These are 
but isolated instances out of many which have bred 
misgiving in one who for many years cherished the 
conviction that a British-made article was always the 
best. That English workmen should be slower, less 
quick-minded, more loth to take up new ideas, or to 
make things as you wanted them and not as they had 



374 The Twentieth Century American 

always made them — these things I had expected to 
find, and found less often than I had expected. But 
that the English workman did ultimately produce 
a better and more trustworthy article — that I never 
doubted, till I found it, from the confessions of the 
workmen and manufacturers themselves, far from 
necessarily true. 

Few Englishmen returning to England after many 
years of residence in the United States (unless per- 
chance they have lived on a ranch where their contact 
with the industrial or commercial life of the people has 
been slight) do not find themselves more or less fre- 
quently appealed to for opinions, in giving which they 
are compelled, however reluctantly, to pose as prophets, 
warning their countrymen to flee from the wrath to 
come, telling them that they underestimate the com- 
mercial power of the United States. Sometimes it 
may be that there will be some one in the company 
who has spent some few weeks, perhaps, in the United 
States. " Now, I don't agree with you there," this 
traveller will say. " When I was in the States, I saw 

. . " He saw, in fact, pigs being roasted at a common- 
place sort of fire, made for the purpose, of logs and 
sticks and coal and things, whereas everybody knows 
that no pig can be duly roasted unless chimney stacks 
and window-casings and front-door handles be mixed 
up with the combustibles. And the others present take 
comfort and are convinced that the Old Country is a 
long way from going to the dogs as yet. Of course 
she is, bless her ! But it is not many years since an 
eminently distinguished authority on iron and steel 
(was he not President of the Iron and Steel Associa- 
tion ?), after having made a tour of the United States, 



A Contrast in Principles 375 

assured British manufacturers that they had nothing 
to fear from American competition in the steel trade. 
It was some years earlier that Chatham de- 
clared that he would not allow the American 
colonies to manufacture even one hobnail for 
themselves. 

I have no desire now to join the band of those who 
are urging England so insistently to " wake up." 
This is not the place for such evangelism, for that is 
not the gospel which this book is intended to spread. 
None the less one story I must tell, told to me many 
years ago in America by one who claimed to have had 
some part in the transactions ; a story that has to do 
with (let us say, to avoid hurting any susceptibilities) 
the sale of tin-tacks to Japan. And whether the story 
is true or not, it is at least well found. 

England, then, had had for years a monopoly of the 
sale of tin-tacks to the Japanese, when a trader in 
Japan became impressed with the fact that the traffic 
was badly handled. The tacks came out from Eng- 
land in packages made to suit the needs of the English 
market. They were labelled, quite truthfully of 
course, " Best English Tacks," and each package con- 
tained an ounce, two ounces, or four ounces in weight, 
and was priced in plain figures at so much in English 
money. The trader had continual trouble with those 
packages. His customers were always wanting them 
to be split up. They wanted two or three sen worth — 
not four pennyworth ; also they did not care about 
ounces. So the trader, starting for a visit to England, 
had some labels written in Japanese characters, and 
when he arrived in England he went to the manufac- 



37 6 The Twentieth Century American 

turers and explained matters. He showed them the 
labels that he had had written and said : 

" The Japanese trade is worth considering and worth 
taking some little trouble to retain; but the people 
dislike your present packages and I have to spend 
most of my time splitting up packages and counting 
tacks. If you will make your packages into two thirds 
of an ounce each and put a label like that on them, you 
will be giving the people what they want and can 
understand, and it will save a lot of trouble all around." 

But the manufacturers, one after another, shook 
their heads. They could not read the label. They 
never had put any such outlandish stuff on anything 
going out of their works, nor had their fathers be- 
fore them. The Japanese ought to be satisfied with 
the fact that they were getting the Best English 
Tacks and not be unreasonable about it. And the 
trader exhausted himself with argument and became 
discouraged. 

He returned to Japan via the United States, and 
stopped to see the nearest tack- manufacturer. He 
showed him the label and told his story. 

"Looks blamed queer!" said the manufacturer, 
" but you say that 's what they want out there ? Let 's 
catch a Jap and see if he can read the thing." 

So a clerk was sent out to fetch a Japanese, which 
he did. 

" How' do, John?" said the manufacturer to the 
new arrival. (Chinese and Japanese alike were all 
"John " to the American until a few years ago.) " You 
can read that, eh? " 

The Japanese smiled, looked at the label and read 
it aloud. 



A Contrast in Principles 377 

" All straight goods, eh, John ? " asked the manu- 
facturer. The Japanese answered in the affirmative 
and retired. 

Then the manufacturer called for his manager. 

"Mr. Smith," he said, as the manager came iD, 
"this is Mr. Brown of Tokio, Japan. He tells me 
that if we do up tacks in two third of an ounce lots 
and stick that label on each package, we might do 
some good business out there. That label — it don't 
matter which is the top of the thing — calls for a price 
that figures out to us at about two cents a pound more 
than our regular export rates. I want this gentleman 
to have a trial lot shipped out to him and he '11 see 
what he can do. Just go ahead will you and see to 
it?" 

" Yes, sir," said the manager ; and when the trader 
sailed from San Francisco a couple of weeks later the 
same vessel carried out a trial order of tacks consigned 
to him at Tokio, made up in two thirds of an ounce 
packages with mysterious hieroglyphics on the labels. 
It only took the trader a few days, after his return, to 
satisfy himself that the sooner he cabled the American 
manufacturer to duplicate the order the better. There 
never has been anybody in the American works who 
has been able to read what is on that label ; but when 
instructions were given for printing new labels after six 
months of trial the order was for a quarter of a million, 
and British manufacturers were astonished to discover 
that by some unexplainable chicanery they had lost 
the Japanese market for tacks. 

I have said that I do not know whether the story is 
true or not ; but fifty similar stories are. And in the 
aggregate they explain a good deal. 



3 7 8 The Twentieth Century American 

But let me say again that the conservatism of British 
manufacturers is not now my theme. But I do most 
earnestly believe that Englishmen as a whole — even 
English traders and manufacturers— unwisely under- 
estimate the commercial power of the United States. 
What the United States has accomplished in the in- 
vasion of the world's markets in the last ten years 
(since the trade revival of 1896-97) is only a foretaste 
of what is to come. So far from there being anything 
unsubstantial — any danger of lack of staying power, 
any want of reserve force— the power has hardly yet 
begun to exert itself. Of Europeans who have recently 
written upon the subject, it seems to me that none has 
shown a truer appreciation of the situation than M. 
Gabriel Hanotaux, the former French Minister for 
Foreign Affairs. 1 He sees the shadow of America's 
commercial domination already falling across Europe ; 
and, so far as France is concerned, he discerns only 
two directions from which help can come. He pleads 
with young Frenchmen to travel more, so that the ris- 
ing generation may be less ignorant of the commercial 
conditions of the modern world and may see more 
clearly what it is that they have to fight, and, second, 
he points to the Colonial Empire of France, with an 
area not much inferior to that of the United States, and 
believes that therein may be laid the foundations of a 
commercial power which will be not unable to cope 
even with that of America. 

It may be only the arrogance and superciliousness 
of the Anglo-Saxon that prevent one sharing the san- 

1 Preface to the Encyclopaedia of Trade between the United 
States and France, prepared by the Societe du Repertoire 
General du Commerce. 



A Contrast in Principles 379 

guineness of M. Hanotaux as to any relief coming to 
the help of France from these two sources, for British 
hopes can only lie in analogous directions. English- 
men also need to understand better the conditions 
which have to be met and the power of their competi- 
tors ; and it is the young men who must learn. Also, 
if it be impossible that the British Isles should hold 
their own against the United States, there appears 
no reason why the British Empire should not be 
abundantly able to do so. 

It is not easy for one who has not lived all his life in 
England to share the satisfaction with which the English 
papers commonly welcome the intelligence that some 
great American manufacturing concern is establishing 
branch works in Canada. It is well for Canada that 
such works should be established; but it is pitiable 
for the Empire that it should be left to the United 
States to establish them. British capital was the chief 
instrumentality with which the United States was en- 
abled to build its own railways and conduct the other 
great enterprises for the development of the resources 
of its mighty West, and it is, from the point of view of 
a British Imperialist, deplorable that British capitalists 
should not now be ready to take those risks for the 
sake of the Empire which American capital is willing 
to take with no other incentive than the probable trade 
profits. 

His conservatism, it should be noticed, has a tend- 
ency to fall away from the Englishman when he goes 
out from the environment and atmosphere of the Brit- 
ish Isles. The Canadian, or the Englishman who has 
gone to Canada young enough to imbibe the colonial 
spirit, is not easily to be distinguished from the citizen 



380 The Twentieth Century American 

of the United States in his ways of doing business. 
Even the Anglo-Indian refuses to subject himself, in 
India, to all the cumbersome formalities with which he 
is compelled to conduct any business transaction when 
at home. Mr. Kipling in one of his latest stories 
has given us a delightful picture of the baffle- 
ment of the Australasian Minister struggling to 
bring his Great Idea for the Good of his Colony 
and the Empire to the attention of the officials in 
Whitehall. 

The encumbering conservatism which now hangs 
upon the wheels of British commerce is no part of — no 
legitimate offshoot of — the English genius. It is a 
fungoid and quite alieu growth, which has fastened 
upon that genius, taking advantage of its frailties. 
Englishmen, we hear, are slow to change and to move; 
yet they have always moved more quickly than 
other European peoples as the Empire stands to 
prove. And if the people of Great Britain had the re- 
modelling of their society to do over again to-day. 
they, following their native instincts, would hardly re. 
build it on its present lines. With the same '"elbow 
room " they would, it may be suspected, produce some- 
thing but little dissimilar (except in the monarchical 
form of government) from that which has been evolved 
in the United States. 

When Englishmen, looking at the progress of the 
United States, doubt its permanence — when they dis- 
trust the substantiality or the honesty in the workman, 
ship in the American commercial fabric — it might be 
well if they would say to themselves that the men who 
are doing these things are only Englishmen with other 
and larger opportunities. Behind all this that meets 



A Contrast in Principles 381 

the eye is the same old Anglo-Saxon spirit of pluck 
and energy which made Great Britain great when she 
was younger and had in turn her larger opportunities. 
Above all, that pluck and energy are unhampered 
by tradition and precedent in exerting themselves in 
whatever direction may be most advantageous ; and to 
be unhampered does not necessarily mean freedom 
only to go wrong. 

An American girl once explained why it was much 
pleasanter to have a chaperon than to be without one : 

"If I am allowed about alone," she explained, "I 
feel that I am on my honour and can never do a thing 
that I would not like mama to see ; but when a chap- 
eron is with me, the responsibility for my behaviour 
is shifted to her. It is her duty to keep me straight. 
I have a right to be just as bad as I can without her 
catching me." 

The tendency of American business life is first to 
develop the individuality and initiative of a man and, 
second, to put him, as it were, on his honour. It is, of 
course, of the essence of a democracy that each man 
should be encouraged to develop whatever good may 
be in him and to receive recognition therefor ; but 
there have been other factors at work in the shaping 
of the American character besides the form of gov- 
ernment. Chief among these factors have been the 
work which Americans have had to do in subduing 
their own continent and that they have had to do it 
unaided and in isolation. Washington Irving has a 
delightful sentence somewhere (in Astoria I think) 
about the frontiersman hewing his way through 
the back woods and developing his character by 
" bickering with bears." " The frontiersmen, by their 



382 The Twentieth Century American 

conquest of nature, had come to despise the strength 
of all enemies," says Dr. Sparks in his History of the 
United States. It was only to be expected, it was indeed 
inevitable, that the first of American thinkers — the man 
whose philosophy caught the national fancy and has 
done more towards the moulding of a national temper- 
ament than, perhaps, any man who ever wrote, should 
have been before all things the Apostle of the Individ- 
ual. " Insist upon Thyself ! " Emerson says — not once, 
but it runs as a refrain through everything he wrote 
or thought " Always do what you are afraid to do ! " 
"The Lord will not make his works manifest by a 
coward." "God hates a coward." "America is only 
another name for Opportunity." My quotations come 
from random memory, but the spirit is right. It is 
the spirit which Americans have been obliged to have 
since the days when the Fathers walked to meeting in 
fear of Indian arrows. And they need it yet. It has 
become an inheritance with them and it, more 
than anything else, shapes the form and method 
of their politics and above all of their business 
conduct. 

I have said elsewhere that in society (except only 
in certain circles in certain cities of the East) it is the 
individual character and achievements of the man 
himself that count ; neither his father nor his grand- 
father matters — nor do his brothers and sisters. And 
it is the same in business.' I am not saying that good 
credentials and strong friends are not of use to any 
man ; but without friends or credentials, the man who 
has an idea which is commercially valuable will find a 
market in which to sell it. If he has the ability to 
exploit it himself and the power to convince others of 



A Contrast in Principles 3S3 

his integrity, lie will find capital ready to back him. 
It is difficult to explain in words to those accustomed 
to the traditions of English business how this principle 
underlies and permeates American business in all its 
modes. 

One example of it — trivial enough, but it will serve 
for illustration — which visiting Englishmen are likely 
to be confronted with, perhaps to their great inconven- 
ience, is in the bank practice in the matter of cheques. 
There is, as is well known, no "crossing" of cheques in 
America, but all cheques are " open " ; and many an 
Englishman has gone confidently to the bank on which 
it was drawn with a cheque, the signature to which he 
knew to be good, and has expected to have the money 
paid over the counter to him without a word. All 
that the English paying teller needs to be satisfied of 
is that the signature of the drawer is genuine and that 
there is money enough to the credit of the account to 
meet the cheque. But the Englishman in the strange 
American bank finds that the document in his hands 
is practically useless, no matter how good the signa- 
ture or how large the account on which it is drawn, 
unless he himself — the person who presents the cheque 
— is known to the bank officials. " Can you identify 
yourself, sir ? " The Englishman usually feels in- 
clined to take the question as an impertinence ; but he 
produces cards and envelopes from his pocket — the 
name on his handkerchief — anything to show that he 
is the person in whose favour the cheque is drawn 
Perhaps in this way he can satisfy the bank official. 
Perhaps he will have to go away and bring 
back somebody who will identify him. It is the 
personality of the individual with whom the busi- 



384 The Twentieth Century American 

ness is done that the American system takes into 
account. 1 

It is, as I have said, a trivial point, but it suffices. 
Vastly more important is the whole banking practice 
in America. This is no place to go into the details 
at the controversy which has raged around the merits 
and demerits of the American banking system. In 
the financial panic of 1893 something over 700 banks 
suspended payment in the United States. At such 
seasons, especially, but more or less at all times, a 
great proportion of the best authorities in the United 
States believe that it would be better for the country 
if the Scotch — or the Canadian adaptation of the Scotch 
— system were to take the place of that now in vogue. 
Possibly they are right. The gain of having the small 
local banks in out-of-the-way places possess all the 
stability of branches of a great central house is ob- 
vious, both in the increase of security to depositors in 
time of financial stress and also in the ability of such 
a house to lend money at lower rates of interest than 
is possible to the poorer institution with its smaller 
capital which has no connections and no resources be- 
yond what are locally in evidence. It may be ques- 
tioned, however, whether the country as a whole 
would not lose much more than it would gain by the 
less complete identification of the bank with local in- 
terests. It would be inevitable that in many cases 
the local manager would be restrained by the greater 

» I do not know whether the story is true or not that Signor 
Caruso was compelled, in default of other means of identifica- 
tion in a New York bank, to lift up his voice and sing to the 
satisfaction of the bank officials. As has been remarked, this 
is not the first time that gold has been given in exchange for 
notes. 



A Contrast in Principles 385 

conservatism of the authorities of the central house 
from lending support to local enterprises, which he 
would extend if acting only by and for himself as an 
independent member of the local business community. 
It is difficult to see how the country as a whole could 
have developed in the measure that it has under any 
system differing much from that which it has had. 

In theory it may be that the functions of a bank are 
precisely the same in Great Britain and in America. 
In practice different functions have become dominant 
in the two. In England a bank's chief business is to 
furnish a safe depository for the funds of its clients. 
In America its chief business is to assist — of course 
with an eye to its own profit and only within limits to 
which it can safely go — the local business community 
in extending and developing its business. The Ameri- 
can business man looks upon the bank as his best 
friend. If his business be sound and he be sensible? 
he gives the proper bank official an insight into his af- 
fairs far more intimate and confidential than the Eng- 
lishman usually thinks of doing. He invites the 
bank's confidence and in turn the bank helps him 
beyond the limits of his established credit-line in what- 
ever may be considered a legitimate emergency. In 
any small town whenever a new enterprise of any pub- 
lic importance is to be started, the bank is expected to 
take shares and otherwise assist in promoting a move- 
ment which is for the common good. The credits 
which American banks — especially in the West — give 
to their customers are astound ingly liberal according to 
an English banker's standards. Sometimes of course 
they make mistakes and have to pocket losses. When a 
storm breaks, moreover (as in the case already quoted 



386 The Twentieth Century American 

of the panic of 1893), they may be unable to call in 
their loans in time to take care of their liabilities. 
But that they have been a tremendous — an incalcula- 
ble — factor in the general advancement of the country 
cannot be questioned. 

The difference between the parts played by the banks 
in the two countries rests of course on two fundamen- 
tal differences in the condition of the countries them- 
selves. The first of these is the fact that while England 
is a country of accumulated wealth and large fortunes 
which need safeguarding, America has until recently 
been a country of small realised wealth but immense 
natural resources which needed developing. The policy 
of the banks has been shaped to meet the demands of 
the situation. 

In the second place (and too much stress cannot be 
laid upon this in any comparison of the business-life of 
the two peoples) the American is always trading on a 
rising market. This is true of the individual and true 
of the nation. Temporary fluctuations there are of 
course, but after every setback the country has only 
gone ahead faster than before. The man with faith in 
the future, provided only that he looked far enough 
ahead to be protected against temporary times of de- 
pression, has always won. Just as the railway com- 
panies push their lines out into the wilderness, confident 
of the population that will follow, and are never disap- 
pointed, so in all other lines the man who is always in 
advance, who does not wait for the demand to be there 
before he enlarges his plant to meet it, but who sees it 
coming and is ready for it when it comes — the man 
who has always acted in the belief that the future will 
be bigger than the present, — that man has never failed 



A Contrast in Principles 387 

to reap bis reward. Of course the necessary danger 
in such a condition is that of over-speculation. But 
nearly every man who amasses wealth or wins large 
commercial success in the United States habitually 
takes risks which would be folly in England. They 
are not folly in him, because the universal growth of 
the country, dragging with it and buoying up all in- 
dustries and all values, as it goes, is on his side. It is 
inevitable that there should result a national tempera- 
ment more buoyant, more enterprising, more alert. 

What is important, too, is that whereas in England 
the field is already more or less full and was handed 
down to the present generation well occupied, so that 
new industries can, as it were, only be erected on the 
ruins of old, and a site has to be cleared of one factory 
before another can be built (all of which is, in a meas- 
ure, only relative and metaphorical), in the United 
States there is always room for the newcomers. New 
population is pouring in to create new markets; new 
resources are being developed to provide the raw ma- 
terial for new industries ; there is abundance of new 
land, new cities, new sites whereon the new factories 
can be built. This is why "America" and "oppor- 
tunity" are interchangeable terms; why young men 
need never lack friends or backing or the chance to 
be the architects of their own fortunes. Society can 
afford to encourage the individual to assert himself, 
because there is space for and need of him. 

From this flow certain corollaries from which we 
may draw direct comparison between the respective 
spirits in whish business in the two countries is carried 
on. In the first place, in consequence of the more 



388 The Twentieth Century American 

crowded condition of the field and the greater intensity 
of competition, the business community in England is 
much more ruthless, much less helpful, in the behaviour 
of its members one towards the other. It is not a 
mere matter of the more exacting scrutiny of credits, 
of the more rigid insistence on the exact fulfilment of 
a bond (provided that bond be stamped), but it col- 
ours unconsciously the whole tone of thought and lan- 
guage of the people. There are two principles on 
which business may be conducted, known in America 
respectively as the "Live and let live" principle, and 
the "Dog eat dog" principle. There was until recently 
in existence in the United States one guild, or asso- 
ciation, representing a purely parasitical trade — that 
of ticket-scalping, — which was fortunately practically 
peculiar to the United States. This concern had de- 
liberately adopted the legend " Dog eat dog " as its 
motto and two bull-dogs fighting as its crest; but in 
doing so its purpose was to proclaim that the guild 
was an Ishmaelite among business men and lived 
avowedly in defiance of the accepted canons of trade. 
On the other hand one meets in America with the 
words " Live and let live " as a trademark, or motto, 
on every hand and on the lips of the people. Few 
men in America but could cite cases which they know 
wherein men have gone out of their way to help their 
bitterest competitor when they knew that he needed 
help. The belief in co-operation, on which follows 
a certain comradeship, as a business principle is 
ingrained in the people. 

I was once given two letters to read, of which one 
was a copy and the other an original. The circum- 
stances which led up to the writing of them were as 



A Contrast in Principles 389 

follows : Two rich men, A. and B., had been engaged 
in a business duel. It was desperate — a outrance, — 
dealing in large figures ; and each man had to call up 
all his reserves and put out all his strength. At last 
the end came and A. was beaten — beaten and ruined. 
Then the letters passed which I quote from memory : 

" Dear Mr. B. : 

"I know when I 'm beaten and if I was quite sure 
you would n't kick a man when he 's down, I would 
come round to see you and grovel. As perhaps you 
can guess, I am in a bad way. 

" Yours truly, A." 

Dear A. : 

" There 's no need to grovel. Come around to my 
house after supper to-morrow night and let us see 
what we can do together to put you straight. 

"Yours truly, B." 

I need hardly say that it was the second letter 
of which I saw the original, or that it was A. who 
showed them to me, when they were already sev- 
eral years old but still treasured, and A. was a wealthy 
man again as a result of that meeting after dinner. A. 
told me briefly what passed at that meeting. " He 
gave me a little more than half a million," he said. 
" Of course he has had it back long ago ; but he did 
not know that he would get it at the time and he took 
no note or other security from me. At the time it 
was practically a gift of five hundred thousand dollars." 

And as I write I can almost hear the English reader 
saying, " Pooh ! the same things are done times without 
number in England." And I can hear the American, 



39° The Twentieth Century American 

still smarting under the recollection of some needlessly 
cruel and unfair thrust from the hands of a competi- 
tor, smile cynically and say that he would like to tell 
me certain things that he knows. Of course there are 
exceptions on either side. It takes, as the American 
is so fond of saying, "all kinds of men to make a 
world." It is the same old difficulty of generalising 
about a nation or drawing up an indictment against a 
whole people. But I do not think that any man who 
has engaged for any length of time in business in both 
countries, who has lived in each sufficiently to absorb 
the spirit of the respective communities, will dissent 
from what I have said. Many Englishmen, without 
knowledge of business in England, go to America and 
find the atmosphere harder and less friendly than they 
were accustomed to at home, and come to quite an- 
other conclusion. But they are comparing American 
business life with the social club-and-country-house 
life of home. Let them acquire the same experience 
of business circles in England, and then compare the 
tone with that of business circles in America, and they 
will change their opinions. 

Let me recall again what was said above as to the 
difference in the motives which may impel a man to 
go into business or trade in the two countries. An 
Englishman cannot well pretend that he does it with 
any other purpose than to make money. The Ameri- 
can hopes to make money too, but he takes up 
business as an honourable career and for the sake of 
winning standing and reputation among his fellows. 
This being so, business in America has a tendency to 
become more of a game or a pastime— to be followed 
with the whole heart certainlv— but in a measure for 



A Contrast in Principles 391 

itself, and not alone for the stakes to be won. It is 
not difficult to see how, in this spirit, it may be easier 
to forego those stakes — to let the actual money slip — 
when once you have won the game. 

It is necessary to refer briefly again to the subject 
of trusts. In England a great corporation which was 
able to demonstrate beyond dispute that it had materi- 
ally cheapened the cost of any staple article to the 
public, and further showed that when, in the process 
of extending its operations, it of necessity wiped out 
any smaller business concerns, it never failed to provide 
the owners or partners of those concerns with manage- 
rial positions which secured to them a larger income 
than they could have hoped to earn as individual 
traders, and moreover took into their service the em- 
ployees of the disbanded concerns at equal salaries, — 
such a corporation would generally be regarded by the 
English people as a public benefactor and as a philan- 
thropically and charitably disposed institution. In 
America the former consideration has some weight, 
though not much ; the latter none at all. 

When a trust takes into its service those men whom 
it has destroyed as individual traders, the fact remains 
that their industrial independence has been crushed. 
The individual can no longer "insist upon himself." 
He is subordinate and no longer* free. One of the first 
principles of American business life, the encourage- 
ment of individual initiative, has been violated, and 
nothing will atone for it. 

The Standard Oil Company can, I believe, prove 
beyond possibility of contradiction that the result of 
its operations has been to reduce immensely the cost 



39 2 The Twentieth Century American 

of oil to the public, as well as to give facilities in the 
way of distribution of the product which unassociated 
enterprise could never have furnished. It can also 
show that in many, and, I imagine, in the majority, of 
cases, it has endeavoured to repair by offers of em- 
ployment of various sorts whatever injuries it has 
done to individuals by ruining their business. But 
these things constitute no defence in the eyes of the 
American people. 

There is the additional ground of public hostility 
that the weapons employed to crush competitors have 
often been illegal weapons. Without the assistance of 
the railway companies (which was given in violation 
of the law) the Standard Oil Company might have 
been unable to win more than one of its battles; but 
this fact, while it furnishes a handle against the com- 
pany and exposes a side of it which may prove to be 
vulnerable, and is therefore kept to the front in any 
public indictment of the company's methods, is an im- 
material factor in the popular feeling. Few Americans 
(or Englishmen) will not accept a reduced rate from a 
railway company when they can get it. Whatever 
actual bitterness may be felt by the average man 
against the Standard Oil Company because it procured 
rebates on its freight bills is rather the bitterness of 
jealousy than of an outraged sense of morality. The 
real bitterness— and very bitter it is — is caused by the 
fact that the company has crushed out so many indi- 
viduals. On similar ground nothing approaching the 
same intensity of feeling could be engendered in the 
British public. 

Let us now recur for a moment to the views of the 
young woman quoted above on the interesting topic of 



A Contrast in Principles 393 

chaperons. We have seen that insistence on the indi- 
viduality is a conspicuous — perhaps it is the most con- 
spicuous — trait of the American character. Encouraged 
by the wider horizon and more ample elbow-room and 
assisted by the something more than tolerant good-will 
of his business associates, colleagues, or competitors, 
the individual, once insisted on, has every chance to 
develop and become prosperous and rich. Every- 
thing helps a man in America to strike out for himself, 
to walk alone, and to dispense with a chaperon. The 
Englishman is chaperoned at almost every step of his 
business career ; and I am not speaking now of the 
chaperonage of his colleagues, of his fellows in the 
community, or of his elders among whom he grows up 
and, generally, in spite of whom the young man must 
make his way to the top. There is another much more 
significant form of chaperonage in English business cir- 
cles, of which it is difficult to speak without provoking 
hostility. 

The English business world is solicitor-cursed. I 
mean by this no reflection on solicitors either individu- 
ally or in the mass. I am making no reference to such 
cases as there have been of misappropriation by solicit- 
ors here and there of funds entrusted to their charge, 
nor to their methods of making charges, which are 
preposterous but not of their choosing. Let us grant 
that, given the necessity of solicitors at all, Great 
Britain is blessed in that she has so capable and up- 
right and in all ways admirable a set of men to fill the 
offices and do the work. What I am attacking is 
solicitordom as an institution. 

It is not merely that there are no solicitors, as such, 
in the United States, for it might well be that tbe 



394 The Twentieth Century American 

general practising lawyers who fill their places, so far 
as their places have to be filled, might be just as seri- 
ous an incubus on business as solicitordom is on the 
business of London to-day. Names are immaterial. 
The essential fact is that the spirit and the conditions 
which make solicitors a necessity in England do not 
exist in America. I do not propose to go into any 
comparison in the differences in legal procedure in the 
two countries ; not being a lawyer, I should undoubt- 
edly make blunders if I did. What is important is 
that a man who is accustomed to walking alone does 
not think of turning to his legal adviser at every step. 
Great corporations and large business concerns have of 
course their counsel, their attorneys, and even their 
" general solicitors." But the ordinary American en- 
gaged in trade or business in a small or moderate way 
gets along from year's end to year's end, perhaps for 
his lifetime, without legal services. I am speaking 
only on conjecture when I say that, taking the country 
as a whole, outside of the large corporations or among 
rich men, over ninety per cent, of the legal documents 
— leases, agreements, contracts, articles of partnership, 
articles of incorporation, bills of sale, and deeds of 
transfer — are executed by the individuals concerned 
without reference to a lawyer. Probably not less than 
three fourths of the actual transactions in the purchase 
of land, houses, businesses, or other property are simi- 
larly concluded without assistance. " What do we 
need of a lawyer?" one man will ask the other and the 
other will immediately agree that they need one not 
at all. 

Of course troubles often arise which would have 
been prevented had the documents been drawn up by 



A Contrast in Principles 395 

a competent hand. The constitutional reluctance to 
go to a lawyer is sometimes carried to lengths that are 
absurd. But I do not believe that the amount of liti- 
gation which arises from that cause is in any way com- 
parable to that which is avoided by the mere fact that 
legal aid is outside the mental horizon. The men who 
conduct most of the affairs of life directly without 
legal help are most likely to adjust differences when 
they arise in the same way. That is a matter of opin- 
ion, however, based only on reasonable analogy, which 
I can advance no figures to support; but what is not 
matter of opinion, but matter of certainty, is, first, that 
the general gain in the rapidity of business movement 
is incalculable, and, second, that business as a whole is 
relieved of the vast burden of solicitors' charges. 

The American, accustomed to the ways of his own 
people, on becoming engaged in business in London is 
astounded, first, at the disposition of the Englishman 
to turn for legal guidance in almost every step he 
takes, second, at the stupendous sums of money which 
are paid for services which in his opinion are entirely 
superfluous, and, finally, at the terrible loss of time 
incurred in the conclusion of any transaction by the 
waiting for the drafting and redrafting and amend- 
ing and engrossing and recording of interminable docu- 
ments which are a bewilderment and an annoyance 
to him. 

The Englishman often says that American business 
methods are slip-shod ; and possibly that is the right 
word. But Englishmen should not for a moment 
deceive themselves into thinking that the American 
envies the Englishman the superior niceties of his 
ways or would think himself or his condition likely to 



396 The Twentieth Century American 

be improved by an exchange. An example of differ- 
ence in the practice of the two countries which has so 
often been used as to be fairly hackneyed (and there- 
fore perhaps stands the better chance of carrying con- 
viction than a more original, if better, illustration) is 
drawn from the theory which governs the building of 
locomotive engines in the two countries. 

The American usually builds his engine to do a 
certain specified service and to last a reasonable length 
of time. During that time he proposes to get all the 
work out of it that he can — to wear it out in fact — 
feeling well assured that, when that time expires, 
either the character of the service to be performed will 
have altered or such improvements will have been in- 
troduced into the science of locomotive construction 
as will make it cheaper to replace the old engine with 
one of later build. The Englishman commonly builds 
his engines as if they were to last for all time. There 
are many engines working on English railways now, 
the American contemporaries of which were scrapped 
twenty years ago. The Englishman takes pride in 
their antiquity, as showing the excellence of the work- 
manship which was put into them. The American 
thinks it would have been incomparably better to 
have thrown the old things away long ago and re- 
placed them with others of recent building which 
would be more efficient. 

The same principle runs through most things in 
American life, where they rarely build for posterity, 
preferring to adapt the article to the work it has to 
perform, expecting to supersede it when the time 
comes with something better. If a thing suffices, it 
suffices ; whether it be a locomotive or a contract. 



A Contrast in Principles 397 

" What is the use," the American asks, " when you 
can come to an agreement with a fellow in ten minutes 
and draw up your contract with him that afternoon, — 
what is the use of calling in your solicitors to ne- 
gotiate and then paying them heavily to keep you 
waiting for weeks while they draft documents? We 
shall have had the contract running a month and be 
making money out of it before the lawyers would get 
through talking." 

Out of this divergence in point of view and practice 
have of course grown other differences. One thing is 
that the American courts have necessarily come to 
adopt more liberal views in the interpretation of con- 
tracts than the English ; they are to a greater extent 
inclined to look more to the intent than to the letter 
and to attach more weight to verbal evidence in elicit- 
ing what the intent was. No stamping of documents 
being necessary in America, the documents calling 
themselves contracts, and which are upheld as such, 
which appear in American courts are frequently of a 
remarkable description ; but I have a suspicion that on 
the whole the American, in this particular, comes as 
near to getting justice on the average as does the 
Englishman. 

And the point is that I believe it to be inevitable 
that the habit of doing without lawyers in the daily 
conduct of business, the habit of relying on oneself 
and dealing with another man direct, must in the long 
run breed a higher standard of individual business in- 
tegrity. Englishmen, relying always on their solicitors' 
advice, are too tempted to consider that so long as they 
are on the right side of the law they are honest. It 
is a shifting of the responsibility to the chaperon ; 



39 8 The Twentieth Century American 

whereas, if alone, you would be compelled to act on 
your honour. 

What I think and hope is the last word that I have 
to say on this rather difficult subject has to do with 
the matter already mentioned, namely the absence of 
the necessity of stamping documents in America. 
Englishmen will remember that the Americans always 
have evinced a dislike of stamps and stamp duties and 
acts relating thereto. Of late years the necessity of 
meeting the expenses of the Spanish war did for a 
while compel the raising of additional internal revenue 
by means of documentary and other stamps. The 
people submitted to it, but they hated it ; and hated it 
afresh as often as they drew or saw a cheque with the 
two-cent stamp upon it. The act was repealed as 
speedily as possible and the stamping of papers has 
for six years now been unknown. 

I think — and I am not now stating any acknow- 
ledged fact, but only appealing to the reader's common- 
sense — that it is again inevitable that where a superior 
sanctity attaches to stamped paper a people must in 
the long run come to think too lightly of that which is 
unstamped. I do not say that the individual English- 
man has as yet come to think too lightly of his word 
or bond because it is informal, but I do think there is 
danger of it. The words "Can we hold him?" or 
(what is infinitely worse) "Can he hold us? "spring 
somewhat readily to the lips of the business man of 
this generation in England. 

Continual dependence on the law and the man of 
law, and an extra respect for paper because it is legal, 
have — they surely cannot fail to have — a tendency to 
breed in the mind a disregard for what is not of a 



A Contrast in Principles 399 

strictly legal or actionable character. It is Utopian 
to dream of a state of society where no law will be 
needed but every man's written and spoken word will 
be a law to him ; but it is not difficult to imagine 
a state of society in which there is such universal 
dependence on the law in all emergencies that 
the individual conscience will become weakened — 
pauperised — atrophied — and unable to stand alone. 

That is, as I have said, the last point that I wish to 
make on this subject ; and the reader will please notice 
that I have nowhere said that I consider American 
commercial morality at the present day to be higher 
than English. Nor do I think that it is. Incontesta- 
bly it is but a little while since the English standard 
was appreciably the higher of the two. I have cited 
from my own memory instances of conditions which 
existed in America only twenty years ago in support 
of the fact — though no proof is needed — that this is 
so. I by no means underestimate the fineness of the 
traditions of British commerce or the number of men 
still living who hold to those traditions. On the other 
hand, better judges than I believe that the standard of 
morality in English business circles is declining. In 
America it is certainly and rapidly improving. 

Present English ideas about American commercial 
ethics are founded on a knowledge of facts, correct 
enough at the time, which existed before the improve- 
ment had made anything like the headway that it has, 
which facts no longer exist. I have roughly compared 
in outline some of the essential qualities of the atmos- 
phere in which, and some of the conditions under 
which, the business men in the two countries live and 
do their business, showing that in the United States 



4oo The Twentieth Century American 

there is a much more marked tendency to insist on 
the character of the individual and a much larger op- 
portunity for the individuality to develop itself ; and 
that in certain particulars there are in England inherited 
social conditions and institutions which it would ap- 
pear cannot fail to hamper the spirit of self-reliance, 
on which self-respect is ultimately dependent. 

And the conclusion ? For the most part my readers 
must draw it for themselves. My own opinion is that, 
whatever the relative standing of the two countries 
may be to-day, it is hardly conceivable that, by the 
course on which each is travelling, in another genera- 
tion American commercial integrity will not stand the 
higher of the two. The conditions in America are 
making for the shaping of a sterner type of man. 

Postscript. — The opinion has been expressed in the 
foregoing pages that in one particular the American on 
the average comes as near to getting justice in his 
courts as does the Englishman. I have also given ex- 
pression to my great respect, which I think is shared 
by everyone who knows anything of it, for the United 
States Supreme Court. Also I have spoken disparag- 
ingly of the English institution of solicitordom. But 
these isolated expressions of opinion on particular 
points must not be interpreted as a statement that 
American laws and procedure are on the whole com- 
parable to the English. I do not believe that they are. 
None the less Englishmen have as a rule such vague 
notions upon this subject that some explanatory com- 
ment seems to be desirable. 

Especially do few Englishmen (not lawyers or stu- 



A Contrast in Principles 401 

dents of the subject) recognise that the abuses in the 
administration of justice in America, of which they 
hear so much, do not occur in the United States courts, 
but in the local courts of the several States. So far 
as the United States (i e r the Federal) Courts are con- 
cerned I believe that the character and capacity of the 
judges (all of whom are appointed and not elected) 
compare favourably with those of English judges. It 
is in the State courts, the judges of which are gener- 
ally elected, that the shortcomings appear ; and while 
it might be reasonable to expect that a great State like 
New York or Massachusetts should have a code of 
laws and an administration of justice not inferior to 
those of Great Britain, it is perhaps scarcely fair to 
expect as much of each of the 46 States, many of 
which are as yet young and thinly populated. 

The chief vice of the State courts arises, of course, 
from the fact that the judges are elected by a partisan 
vote ; from which it follows almost of necessity that 
there will be among them not a few who in their official 
actions will be amenable to the influence of party 
pressure. It is perhaps also inevitable that under such 
a system there will not seldom find their way to the 
bench men of such inferior character that they will be 
directly reachable by private bribes ; though this, I 
believe, seldom occurs. The State courts, however, 
labour under other disadvantages. 

We have seen how Congressmen are hampered in 
the execution of their duties by the constant calls upon 
their time made by the leaders of their party, or other 
influential interests, in their constituencies. The same 
is true on a smaller scale of members of the State leg-. 
islatures. Congress and the legislatures of the several 
26 



4Q2 The Twentieth Century American 

States alike are moreover limited by the restrictions 
of written constitutions. The British Parliament is 
paramount; but the United States legislatures are 
always operating under fear of conflict with the Con- 
stitution. Their spheres are limited, so that they can 
only legislate on certain subjects and within certain 
lines ; while finally the country has grown so fast, the 
conditions of society have changed with such rapidity, 
that it has been inherently difficult for lawmaking 
bodies to keep pace with the increasing complexity of 
the social and industrial fabric. 

If the limitations of space did not forbid, it would 
be interesting to show how this fact, more than any 
other (and not any willingness to leave loopholes for 
dishonesty) makes possible such offences as those 
which, committed by certain financial institutions in 
New York, were the immediate precipitating cause of 
the recent panic. Growth has been so rapid that, with 
the best will in the world to erect safeguards against 
malfeasance, weak spots in the barricades are, as it 
were, only discovered after they have been taken ad. 
vantage of. With the preoccupation of the legislators 
stable doors are only found to be open by the fact that 
the horses are already in the street. 

But, after all has been said in extenuation, there 
remain many things in American State laws for which 
one may find explanation but not much excuse. 

Eeference has already been made to the entirely 
immoral attitude of many of the State legislatures 
towards corporations, especially towards railway com- 
panies ; and in some of the Western States prejudice 
against accumulated wealth is so strong that it is prac- 
tically impossible for a rich man or corporation to get 



A Contrast in Principles 4°3 

a verdict against a poor man. It would be easy to cite 
cases from one's personal experience wherein jurors 
have frankly explained their rendering of a verdict in 
obvious contradiction of the weight of evidence, by the 
mere statement that the losing party " could stand it " 
while the other could not. Of a piece with this is a 
class of legislation which has been abundant in West- 
ern States, where the legislators as well as most of the 
residents of the States have been poor, giving extraor. 
dinary advantages to debtors and making the collection 
of debts practically impossible. In some cases such 
legislation has defeated itself by compelling capitalists 
to refuse to invest, and wholesale traders to refuse to 
give credit, inside the State. 

Yet another source of corruption in legislation is to 
be found in the mere numerousness of the States them- 
selves. It may obviously inure to the advantage of 
the revenues of a particular State to be especially leni- 
ent in matters which involve the payment of fees. It 
is evidently desirable that a check should be put on the 
reckless incorporation of companies with unlimited share 
capital, the usual form of such a check being, of course, 
the graduation of the fee for incorporation in propor- 
tion to such capital. One State which has laws more 
generous than any of its neighbours in this particular 
is likely to attract to it the incorporation of all the 
companies of any magnitude from those States, the 
formal compliance with the requirements of having a 
statutory office, and of holding an annual meeting, in 
that State being a matter of small moment. Similar 
considerations may govern one State in enacting laws 
facilitating the obtaining of divorce. 

There are, then, obviously many causes which make 



404 The Twentieth Century American 

the attainment of either an uniform or a satisfactory 
code of jurisprudence in all States alike extremely 
difficult of attainment. It will only be arrived at by, 
on the one hand, the extension of the Federal author- 
ity and, on the other the increase in population and 
wealth (and, consequently, a sense of responsibility) in 
those States which at present are less forward than 
their neighbours. But, again, it is worth insisting on 
the fact that the faults are faults of the several States 
and not of the United States. They do not imply 
either a lack of a sense of justice in the people as a 
whole or any willingness to make wrong-doing easy. 
But it is extremely difficult for the public opinion of 
the rest of the country to bring any pressure to bear 
on the legislature of one recalcitrant State. The desire 
to insist on its own independence is indeed so strong 
in every State that any attempt at outside interference 
must almost inevitably result only in developing 
resistance. 

And again I find myself regretfully in direct conflict 
with Mr. Wells. But it is not easy to take his medita- 
tions on American commercial morality in entire 
seriousness. 

"In the highly imaginative theory that underlies 
the reality of an individualistic society," he says {The 
Future in America, p. 168), " there is such a thing as 
honest trading. In practice I don't believe there is. 
Exchangeable things are supposed to have a fixed 
quality called their value, and honest trading is I am 
told the exchange of things of equal value. Nobody 
gains or loses by honest trading and therefore nobody 
can grow rich b} r it." And more to the same effect. 



A Contrast in Principles 405 

A trader buys one thousand of a given article per 
month from the manufacturer at ninepence an article 
and sells them to his customers at tenpence. The 
extra penny is his payment for acting as purveyor, 
and the customers recognise that it is an equitable 
charge which they pay contentedly. That is honest 
trading ; and the trader makes a profit of a trifle over 
four pounds a month, or fifty pounds a year. 

Another trader purveys the same article, buying it 
from the same manufacturer, but owing to the posses- 
sion of larger capital, better talent for organisation, 
and more enterprise, he sells, not one thousand, but 
one million per mouth. Instead of selling them at ten- 
pence, however, he sells them at ninepence half-penny ; 
thereby making his customers a present of one half- 
penny, taking to himself only one half of the sum to 
which they have already consented as a just charge 
for the services which he renders. Supposing that he 
pays the same price as the other trader for his goods 
(which, buying by the million, he would not do), he 
makes a profit of some £2083 a month, or £25,000 a 
year. Evidently he grows rich. 

This is the rudimentary principle of modern busi- 
ness ; but because one man becomes rich, though he 
gives the public the same service for less charge than 
honest men, Mr. Wells says that he cannot be honest. 

If two men discover simultaneously gold mines of 
equal value, and one, being timid and conservative, 
puts twenty men to work while the other puts a 
thousand, and each makes a profit of one shilling a 
day on each man's labour, it is evident that while one 
enjoys an income of a pound a day for himself the 
other makes fifty times as much. It is not only obvious 



406 The Twentieth Century American 

that the latter is just as honest as the former, but lie 
can well afford to pay his men a shilling or two a 
week more in wages. He can afford to build them 
model homes and give them reading-rooms and 
recreation grounds, which the other cannot 

Others, besides Mr. Wells, lose their heads when 
they contemplate large fortunes made in business ; but 
the elementary lesson to be learned is not merely that 
such large fortunes are likely to be as "honestly" 
acquired as the smaller ones, but also that the man 
who trades on the larger scale is — or has the poten- 
tiality of being — the greater benefactor to the com- 
munity, not merely by being able to furnish the people 
with goods at a lower price but also by his ability to 
employ more labour and to surround his workmen 
with better material conditions. 

The tendency of modern business industry to ag- 
glutinate into large units is, as has been said, inevit- 
able ; but, what is better worth noting, like all natural 
developments from healthy conditions, it is a thing in- 
herently beneficent. That the larger power is capable 
of greater abuse than the smaller is also evident ; and 
against that abuse it is that the American people is 
now struggling to safeguard itself. But to assail all 
trading on a scale which produces great wealth as 
" dishonest " is both impertinent (it is Mr. Wells's own 
word, applied to himself) and absurd. 

The aggregate effect of the great consolidations in 
America and in England alike (of the " trusts " in 
fact) has so far been to cheapen immensely the price 
of most of the staples of life to the people; and that 
will always be the tendency of all consolidations which 
stop at any point short of monopoly. And that an 



A Contrast in Principles 407 

artificial monopoly (not based on a natural monopoly) 
can ever be made effective in any staple for more than 
the briefest space of time has yet to be demonstrated. 

The other consideration, of the destruction of the 
independence of the individual, remains ; but that lies 
outside Mr. Wells' range. 



CHAPTER XV 
The Peoples at Play 

American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago — The Power of Golf 
— A Look Ahead — Britain, Mother of Sports — Buffalo in New 
York — And Pheasants on Clapham Common — Shooting Foxes 
and the " Sport" of Wild-fowling — The Amateur in American 
Sport — At Henley — And at Large — Teutonic Poppycock. 

In "An Error in the Fourth Dimension," Kipling 
tells how one Wilton Sargent, an American, came to 
live in England and earnestly laboured to make himself 
more English than the English. He learned diligently 
to do many things most un-American: — " Last mystery 
of all he learned to golf — well ; and when an American 
knows the innermost meaning of ' Don't press, slow back 
and keep your eye on the ball,' 1 he is, for practical pur- 
poses, de-nationalised." Some six years after that was 
written an American golfer became Amateur Champion 
of Great Britain. Yes ; I know that Mr. Travis was 
not born in the United States, but qua golfer he is 
American pure and simple. Which shows the danger 
of too hasty generalisation, even on the part of a gen- 
ius. And it shows more. When he wrote those 
words Kipling was fully justified by the facts as they 
stood. It is the fault of the character of the American 
people, which frustrates prophecy. 

Twenty -five years ago there was no amateur sport 
408 



The Peoples at Play 409 

in America — none. Men, it is true, went off and 
shot (" hunted " as Americans call it) and fished and 
yachted for a few days, or weeks, in summer or autumn, 
in a rather rough-and-ready sort of way. Also, when 
at college they played baseball and football and, per- 
haps, they rowed. After leaving college there was 
probably not one young American in a hundred who 
entered a boat or played a game of either football or 
baseball on an average of once in a year. The people 
as a whole had no open-air games. Baseball was 
chiefly professional. Cricket had a certain foothold in 
Philadelphia and on Staten Island, but it was an exotic 
sport, as it remains to-day, failing entirely to enlist the 
sympathies of the multitude. Polo was not played. 
Lawn tennis had been introduced, but had made little 
headway. In all America there were, I think, three 
racquet courts, which were used chiefly by visiting 
Englishmen, and not one tennis court. Lacrosse was 
quite unknown, and as for the "winter sports" of 
snow-shoeing, ski-ing, ice-boating, curling, and tobog- 
ganing, they were practised only here and there by a 
few (except for the " coasting " of children) as rather a 
curious fad. 

It was a strange experience for an Englishman in 
those days, fond of his games, to go from his clubs and 
the society of his fellows at home, to mix in the same 
class of society in America. As in the circles that he 
had left behind him, so there, the conversation was 
still largely on sporting topics, but while in England 
men talked of the games in which they played them- 
selves and of the feats and experiences of their friends, 
in the leading young men's clubs of New York — the 
Union, the Knickerbocker, and the Calumet — the talk 



4io The Twentieth Century American 

was solely of professional sport: of the paid baseball 
nines, of prize fighters (Sullivan was then just rising to 
his glory), and professional scullers (those were the 
days of Hanlan), and the like. No man talked of his 
own doings or of those of his friends, for he and his 
friends did nothing, except perhaps to spar for an hour 
or so once or twice a week, or go through perfunctory 
gymnastics for their figures' sakes. 

Until a dozen years ago the situation had not mate- 
rially changed. Lawn tennis had made some headway, 
but the thing that wrought the revolution was the 
coming of golf. It may be doubted if ever in history 
has any single sport, pastime, or pursuit so modified 
the habits, and even the character, of a people in an 
equal space of time as golf has modified those of the 
people of the United States. 

Enough has already been written of the enthusiasm 
with which the Americans took up the game itself, of 
the social prestige which it at once obtained, of the 
colossal sums of money that have been lavished on the 
making of courses, of the sumptuousness of the club- 
houses that have sprung up all over the land. That 
golf is in itself a fascinating game, is sufficiently proved 
in England, where it has drawn so many thousands of 
devotees away from cricket, football, lawn tennis, and 
other sports. But can we imagine what the result 
might have been if there had been in Great Britain no 
cricket, or football, or other sports, so that all the 
game-loving enthusiasm of the nation had been free to 
turn itself loose into that one channel? And this is just 
what did happen in America. Golf had a clear field 
and a strenuous sport-loving nation, devoid of open-air 
games, at its mercy. 



The Peoples at Play 411 

The result was not merely that people took to play- 
ing golf and that young men neglected their offices and 
millionaires stretched unwonted muscles in scrambling 
over bunkers. Golf taught the American people to 
play games. It took them out from their great office- 
buildings and from their five-o'clock cocktails at the 
club, into the open air ; and they found that the open 
air was good. So around nearly every golf club other 
sports grew up. Polo grounds were laid out by the 
side of the links, croquet lawns appeared on one side 
of the club-house and lawn-tennis nets arose on the 
other, while traps for the clay-pigeon shooters were 
placed safely off in a corner. 

Golf came precisely at the moment when the people 
were ready for it. Just as America, having in a meas- 
ure completed the exploitation of her own continent 
and developed a manufacturing power beyond the 
resources of consumption in her people, was com- 
mercially ripe for the invasion of the markets of 
the world ; just as she came, in her overflowing 
wealth and power, to a recognition of her greatness as 
a nation, and was politically ripe for an Imperial policy 
of colonial expansion ; just as, tired of the loose code 
of ethics of the scrambling days, when the country 
was still one half wilderness and none had time to care 
for the public conscience, she was morally ripe for the 
wonderful revival which has set in in the ethics of 
politics and commerce and of which Mr. Koosevelt has 
been and is the chief apostle : so, by the individual 
richness of her citizens, giving larger leisure in which 
to cultivate other pleasures than those which their 
offices or homes could afford, she was ripe for the 
coming of the day of open-air games. And having 



4i2 The Twentieth Century American 

turned to them, she threw herself into their pursuit 
with the ardour and singleness of purpose which are 
characteristic of the people and which, as applied to 
games, seem to English eyes to savour almost of pro- 
fessionalism. As a matter of fact they are only the 
manifestations of an essential trait of the American 
character. 

The result was that almost at the same time as an 
American player was winning the British Amateur 
Golf Championship, an American polo team was put- 
ting All England on her mettle at Hurlingham, and it 
was not with any wider margin than was necessary for 
comfort that Great Britain retained the honours in 
lawn tennis, which she has since lost to one of her own 
colonies. 

It is curious that this awakening of the amateur 
sporting spirit in the United States should have come 
just at the time when many excellent judges were be- 
wailing the growing popularity of professional sport in 
England. Any day now, one may hear complaints 
that the British youth is giving up playing games him- 
self for the purpose of watching professional wrestlers 
or football games or county cricket matches. My 
personal opinion is that there is no need to worry. 
The growing interest in exhibition games reacts in 
producing a larger number of youths who strive to 
become players. Not only in spite of, but largely be- 
cause of, the greater spectacular attraction of both 
football and cricket than in years gone by, there is an 
immensely larger number of players of both — and of 
all other — games than there ever was before. It is 
little more than a score of years since Association 
football, at least, was practically the monopoly of a 



The Peoples at Play 413 

few public schools and of the members of the two 
Universities — of " gentlemen " in fact. Any loss which 
the nation can have suffered from the tendency to sit 
on benches and applaud professional players must 
have been made up a thousand times over in the bene- 
fit to the national plrysique from the spreading of the 
game into wide classes which formerly regarded it, 
much as they might fox-hunting, as a pastime reserved 
only for their "betters." 

It is none the less interesting and instructive that in 
this field as in so many others the directly opposite 
tendencies should be at work in the two countries : 
that just when America is beginning to learn the de- 
light of being a game-loving nation and amateur sport 
is thriving, not yet to the detriment of, but in propor- 
tions at least which stand fair comparison with, pro- 
fessional, the cry should be raised in England that 
Englishmen are forgetting to play games themselves 
in their eagerness to watch others do them better. 
Here, as in other things, the gap between the habits of 
the two peoples is narrowing rapidly. They have not 
yet met ; for in England the time and attention given 
to games and sports by amateurs is still incomparably 
greater than on the other side. But that the advancing 
lines will meet — and even cross — seems probable. And 
when they have crossed, what then? Will America 
ever oust Great Britain from the position which she 
holds as the Mother of Sports and the athletic centre 
of the world ? 

Some things, it appears, one can predict with cer- 
tainty. America has already taken to herself a dis- 
agreeable number of the records in track athletics ; and 
she will take more. On the links the performance of 



414 The Twentieth Century American 

Mr. Travis, isolated as yet, is only a warning of many 
similar experiences in the future. In a few years it will 
be very hard for any visiting golf team of less than All 
England or All Scotland strength to win many matches 
against American clubs on their home courses ; and 
the United States will be able to send a team over 
here that will be beaten only by All England — or per- 
haps will not be beaten by All Britain. At polo the 
Americans will go on hammering away till they pro- 
duce a team that can stand unconquered at Hurling- 
ham. It will be very long before they can turn out a 
dozen teams to match the best English dozen ; but by 
mere force of concentration and by the practice of 
that quality which, as has already been said, looks 
so like professionalism to English eyes, one team to 
rival the English best they will send over. In lawn 
tennis it cannot be long before a pair of Americans 
will do what an Australian pair did in 1907, just as 
the United States already holds the Ladies' Champion- 
ship ; and England is going to have some difficulty 
in recovering her honours at court tennis. In rifle 
shooting America must be expected to beat England 
oftener than England beats America; but the edge 
will be taken off any humiliation that there might be 
by the fact that Britain will have Colonial teams as 
good as either. 

And when all this has happened, will England's 
position be shaken ? Not one whit ! Not though the 
America's cup never crosses the Atlantic and though 
sooner or later an American college crew succeeds — 
as surely, for their pluck, they deserve to succeed — 
in imitating the Belgians and carrying off the Grand 
at Henley. There remain games and sports enough 



The Peoples at Play 415 

which the United States will never take up seriously, 
at which if she did she would be debarred by climatic 
conditions or other causes from ever threatening Brit- 
ish supremacy. 

The glory of England lies in the fact that she 
" takes on " the best of all the nations of the world at 
their own games. It is not the United States only, 
but all her Colonies and every country of Europe that 
turn to Great Britain as to their best antagonist in 
whatever sport they find themselves proficient. Just 
now England's brow is somewhat bare of laurels, but 
year in and year out Britain will continue to win the 
majority of contests in her meetings with all the 
world ; and if she lose at times, is it not better to have 
rivals good enough to make her extend herself ? And 
is it not sufficient for her pride that she, one people, 
should win — if it be only — half of all the world's 
honours ? 

Meanwhile Englishmen can afford to rejoice un- 
grudgingly at the new spirit which has been born in 
the United States. Each year the number of "events" 
in which an international contest is possible increases. 
The time may not be far away when there will 
be almost as long a list of Anglo-American annual 
contests as there is now between Oxford and Cam- 
bridge. But it will be a very long time before the 
United States can displace Great Britain from the 
pre-eminence which she holds — and the wonderful* 
character of which, I think, few Englishmen appre- 
ciate. Before that time comes such other sweeping 
changes will probably have come over the map of the 
world and the relations of the peoples that Britain's 
displacement will have lost all significance. 



4 J 6 The Twentieth Century American 

And Englishmen can always remember that, what- 
ever triumphs the Americans may win in the domain 
of sport, they win them by virtue of the English blood 
that is in them. 

It is, of course, inevitable that in many particulars 
the American and English ideas of sport should be 
widely different There is an old, old story in America 
of the Englishman who arrived in New York and, on 
the day after his arrival, got out his rifle and pro- 
ceeded to make enquiries of the hotel people as to 
the best direction in which to start out to find buffalo 
— the nearest buffalo at the time being, perhaps, two 
thousand miles away. It is a story which has con- 
tributed not a little to contempt of the Britisher in 
many an innocent American mind. It happens that 
in my own experience I have known precisely that 
same blunder made by an American in England. 

I had met an American friend, with whom I have 
shot in America, at his hotel on the evening of his 
arrival in London one day in November. In the 
course of conversation I mentioned that the shooting 
season was in full swing. 

"Good," he said. "Let me hire a gun somewhere 
to-morrow and let 's go out, if you 've nothing to do, 
and have some shooting." 

Nothing, he opined, would be simpler, or more 
agreeable, than to drive out — or possibly take a train 
— to some wild spot in the vicinity of London — Clap- 
ham Common perhaps — and spend a day among the 
pheasants. It was precisely the Englishman and his 
buffalo — the prehistoric instinct of the race ("What 
a beautiful day ! Let us go and kill something ! ") 



The Peoples at Play 417 

blossoming amid unfamiliar conditions. My American 
friend wanted to kill an English pheasant. He had 
heard much of them as the best of game-birds. He 
had eaten them, much refrigerated, in New York and 
found them good. And he knew nothing of preserv- 
ing and of a land that is all parcelled out into parks 
and gardens and spinneys. Why not then go out and 
enjoy ourselves? Before he left England he had 
some pheasant shooting, and it is rarely that a man on 
his first day at those conspicuous but evasive fowl 
renders as good an account of himself as did he. 
Similarly every American with a sound sporting in- 
stinct must hope that that traditional Englishman 
ultimately got his buffalo. 

Many times in the United States in the old days 
have I done exactly what that American then wished 
to do in London. Finding myself compelled to spend 
a night at some crude and unfamiliar Western town, I 
have made enquiries at the hotel as to the shooting — 
duck or prairie chicken — in the neighbourhood. Hir- 
ing a gun of the local gunsmith and bu\'ing a hun- 
dred cartridges, one then secured a trap with a driver, 
who probably brought his own gun and shot also 
(probably better than oneself), but who certainly knew 
the ground. The best ground might be three or five 
or ten miles out — open prairie where chicken were 
plentiful, or a string of prairie lakes or "sloughs" 
(pronounced "sloo") with duck-passes between. That 
evening one came home, hungry and happy as a 
hunter ought to be, with perhaps half a dozen brace 
of spike-tailed grouse (the common " chicken " of the 
Northwestern States) or ten or a dozen duck — mallard, 
widgeon, pintail, two kinds of teal, with, it might be, a 

27 



418 The Twentieth Century American 

couple of red-heads or canvas-backs, — or, not improba- 
bly, a magnificent Canada goose as the spoils. 

With the settlement of the country, the multiplica- 
tion of shooters, and the increase in the number of 
" gun-clubs," which have now included most of the 
easily accessible duck-grounds in the country in their 
private preserves, the possibilities of those delightful 
days are growing fewer, but even now there are many 
parts of the West where the stranger can still do as I 
have done many times. 

Though the people had so few outdoor games, the 
great majority of Americans, except the less well-to-do 
of the city-dwellers of the Eastern States, have been 
accustomed to handle gun and rod from their child- 
hood. The gun may at first have been a rusty old 
muzzle-loader, and the rod a "pole" cut from the bank 
of the stream with a live grasshopper for bait; and 
there are few better weapons to teach a boy to be a 
keen sportsman. The birds that he shot were game — 
duck or geese, turkeys, quail, grouse, or snipe — and 
the fish that he caught were mostly game fish— trout 
and bass. It is true that the American generally 
shoots foxes ; so does the Englishman when he goes to 
the Colonies where there are no hounds and too many 
foxes, with game birds which he wishes kept for his 
own shooting, and domestic chickens which he destines 
for his own table. On the other hand the American 
does not mount a miniature cannon in a punt and 
shoot waterfowl by wholesale when sitting on the 
water. It is only the gunner for the market, the man 
who makes his living by it, who does that, and the 
laws do their best to stop even him. The American 
sportsman who cannot get his duck fairly on the wing 



The Peoples at Play 419 

with a 12- or 16-bore prefers not to get them at all. 
"But," objects the English wildfowl shooter, "suppose 
the birds are not get-at-able in any other way? " " So 
much," the American would retort, " the better for 
the birds. They have earned their lives ; get them like 
a sportsman or let them go." 

The time may not be far away— and many Eng- 
lishmen will be glad when it comes — when to kill 
waterfowl at rest with a duck gun will no longer be 
considered a " sport" that a gentleman can engage in 
in England. Perhaps fox-hunting will become so 
popular in the United States that foxes will be gener- 
ally preserved. The sportsmen of each country will 
then think better of those of the other. Meanwhile it 
would be pleasanter if each would believe that such 
little seemingly unsportsmanlike peculiarities that the 
other may have developed are only the accidents of 
his environment, and that under the same circum- 
stances there is not a pin to choose between their 
sportsmanship. 

Reference has more than once been made to the 
quality which looks to English eyes so much like 
semi-professionalism in American sport. It is a deli- 
cate subject, in handling which susceptibilities on one 
side or the other may easily be hurt. 

The intense earnestness and concentration of the 
American on his one sport — for most Americans are 
specialists in one only — does not commend itself to 
English amateurs. The exclusiveness, which seems to 
be suspicious of foul play, and the stringent training 
system of certain American crews at Henley have been 
out of harmony with all the traditions of the great 



420 The Twentieth Century American 

Regatta and have caused much ill feeling, some of which 
has occasionally come to the surface. Some of the pro- 
ceedings of American polo teams have not coincided 
with what is ordinarily considered, in England, the 
behaviour of gentlemen in matters of amateur sport. 
On the other hand, Americans universally believe that 
Lord Dunraven acted in a most unsportsmanlike man- 
ner in the unfortunate cup scandal; and in one case 
they are — or were at the time — convinced that one of 
their crews was unfairly treated at Henley. Honours 
therefore on the surface are fairly easy ; and, while 
every Englishman knows that both the American 
charges quoted are absurd, every American is no less 
of the opinion that the English grounds of complaint 
are altogether unreasonable. 

We must remember that after all a good many of the 
best English golfers and lawn-tennis players do no- 
thing else in life but golf or play lawn-tennis. And 
this tendency to specialise is undoubtedly increasing. 
Meanwhile it will never be rooted out of the American 
character and in departments of sport where it, and it 
alone, will bring pre-eminence, Englishmen will either 
have to do as Americans do or, sooner or later, consent 
to be defeated. There is nothing in the practice at 
which the Englishman can fairly cavil. Americans 
have still much the fewer sports ; and it is the national 
habit to take up one and concentrate on it with all 
one's might. ' 

1 Though immaterial to the argument, it may be as well to 
state that my personal sympathies are entirely with the English 
practice. In the matter of college athletics especially the spirit 
in which certain sports (especially football and, in not much 
less degree, rowing and baseball) are followed at some of the 
American universities, is entirely distasteful to me. On the 



The Peoples at Play 421 

A more difficult aspect of the situation has to do 
with the question of the definition of " gentleman-ama- 
teur " ; the fact being, of course, that the same definition 
has not the same significance in the two countries. 
The radical difficulty lies in the fact that the word 
"gentleman" in its English sense of a man of gentle 
birth has no application to America. Let this not be 
understood as a statement that there are any fewer 
gentlemen in America or that the word is not used. 
But its usage is not re-inforced, its limits are not de- 
fined, as in England, by any line of cleavage in the 
social system. A large number of the gentlemen of 
America are farmers' sons; more than half are the sons 
of men who commenced life in very humble positions, 
and nearly all are the sons of men who are engaged in 
trade or in business, the majority of them being de- 
stined to go into trade or business (and to begin at the 
beginning) themselves. In England, of course, the 
process of the obliteration of the old line is going on 
with great rapidity. In America, on the other hand, 
there is a tendency towards the drawing of a somewhat 

other hand, I know nothing more creditable to the English 
temperament than the spirit in which the contests in the cor- 
responding sports are conducted between the great English 
universities. And this feeling is shared, I know, by some (and 
I believe by most) of those Americans who, as Rhodes scholars 
or otherwise, have had an opportunity of coming to under- 
stand at first hand the difference between the practice in the 
two countries. But this is an individual prepossession only ; 
against which stands the fact that my experience of Ameri- 
cans who have w^on notoriety in athletics at one or other of the 
American universities, is that they are unspoiled by the system 
through which they have passed and possess just as sensitive 
and generous a sporting instinct as the best men turned out by 
Oxford or Cambridge. 



422 The Twentieth Century American 

corresponding line. But the fact remains that at pre- 
sent there exists this fundamental distinction and the 
consequence is that Englishmen continue to find among 
American " amateurs " and in teams of American 
"gentlemen,'' individuals who would not be accepted 
into the same categories in England. 

But what Englishmen should endeavour to under- 
stand is that the man who on the surface seems to 
belong to a class which in England would be objection- 
able in the company of gentlemen probably has none 
of those characteristics which would make him objec- 
tionable were he English. He has far more of the 
characteristics of a gentleman than of the other quali- 
ties. The qualities which go to make a " gentleman," 
even in the English sense, are many and complex ; but 
the assumption is that they are all present in the man 
who bears the public school and university stamp. The 
Englishman is accustomed to accept the presence or 
absence of one or a few of those qualities in an individ- 
ual as evidence of the presence or absence of them all. 
In judging other Englishmen, the rule works satis- 
factorily. But in America, with its different social 
system, the qualities are not tied up in the same bundles, 
so that the same inference fails. The same, or a similar, 
peculiarity of voice or speech or manner or dress or 
birth does not denote — much less does it connote — 
the same or similar things in representatives of the 
two peoples. Particular Englishmen have learned this 
often enough in individual cases. How often has it 
not happened that an Englishman, meeting an American 
first as a stranger, not even being informed that he is 
an American, has, judging from some one external 
characteristic, turned from him as being an Undesirable, 



The Peoples at Play 423 

only to be introduced to him later, or meet him under 
other conditions, and find in him one of the best fellows 
that he ever met? The thing is happening every day. 
Very often, with a little more knowledge or a little 
clearer understanding, Englishmen would know that 
their judgment of some American amateur athlete is 
shockingly unjust To bar him out would be incom- 
parably more unjust to him than his inclusion is unjust 
to any antagonist 

This of course does not touch the fact — which is a 
fact — 'that in America what answers to the gentleman- 
amateur in England is drawn from a much larger 
proportion of the people. This does not however mean, 
when rightly viewed, what Englishmen generally think 
it means, that Americans go down into other — and 
presumably not legitimate — classes for their recruits. 
It only means that a very much larger proportion of 
the people belong to one class. There is no point at 
which an arbitrary line can be drawn. This is in truth 
only another way of saying what has been said already 
more than once, that the American people is really- 
more homogeneous than the English, or rather is homo- 
geneous over a larger part of its area, so that the t} T pe- 
American represents a greater proportion of the people 
of the United States than the t}^pe-Briton represents of 
the people of the British Isles. 

This is obviously in the realm of sport so much to 
America's advantage. It is not a condition against 
which the Englishman has any right to protest, any 
more than he has to move amendments to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. When better comprehended, 
Englishmen will accept it without either resentment or 
regret The United States has a larger population than 



424 The Twentieth Century American 

Great Britain; so much the better for the United States. 
Also a larger proportion of that population must be 
admitted into the category of gentleman-amateur in 
sport ; so much the more the better for them. 

But, curiously enough, this condition has its inherent 
drawback, which not impossibly more than compensates 
for its advantages. The fact that young Americans 
grow up so much of a class involves the essential fact 
that the enormous majority of them are educated at 
the Public Schools, that is at the Board Schools or 
Government Schools or whatever they would be called 
if their precise counterpart existed in England. The 
United States has not (the fact has been touched on 
before) any group of institutions comparable to the great 
schools of England. A few excellent schools there are 
which bear some resemblance to the English models, 
but they are not numerous enough to go any way to- 
wards leavening the nation. It is to the Public Schools 
that, in the mass, the English gentleman-amateur 
owes his training, not only in sports but in many other 
things besides : especially in those things which stamp 
on him the mark by which he is recognised as belong- 
ing to his right class through life. The American, as 
has been said, is not so stamped ; but in missing that 
stamp — or in failing to receive it — he necessarily missed 
also all that discipline and training in games which the 
Public School gave to the Englishman. The very 
same cause as gives America an advantage in the 
numbers from which she can draw her amateur athletes, 
also forbids that these recruits should have had the 
same advantages of early training as fall to the 
Englishman. 

The thing is about as broad as it is long. It is not 



The Peoples at Play 4 2 5 

difficult to imagine that the great schools might never 
have come into existence in England, so that a larger 
proportion of the population than is now the case would 
be educated at some intermediate institutions, at the 
Grammar Schools let us say, when the English gentle- 
man-amateur athletes — the polo, golf, and tennis teams 
and the crews that row at Henley — would be drawn 
from a larger circle of the population, and the individ- 
uals would not bear as close a superficial resemblance, 
one to the other, as they do to-clay. They would in 
fact be more like the members of American athletic 
teams as Englishmen know them. The question is 
whether England would gain or lose in athletic ef- 
ficiency. When Englishmen find something to cavil 
at in an individual American amateur or in an Ameri- 
can amateur team or crew, would it not be better to 
stop and consider whether the disadvantages which 
compel America to be represented by such an individ- 
ual or team or crew, do not outweigh the advantages 
which enable her to use him or them? If the United 
States were to develop the same educational machinery 
as exists in England, which would stamp practically 
all their gentlemen-amateurs with the same hall-mark, 
as they are so stamped in England, and would at the 
same time give them the English public-school boy's 
training in games, would not England, as a mere matter 
of athletic rivalry, be worse off instead of better? 

For the purpose of pointing the moral of the essen- 
tial likeness of the American and English characters, 
as contrasted with those of other peoples, reference has 
already been made to Professor Munsterberg and his 
book. It is an excellent book ; but what English 



426 The Twentieth Century American 

writer would think it necessary to inform English 
readers that " the American student recreates himself 
on the athletic field rather than in the ale-house " ? 
We know something of the life of a German student ; 
but it is only when a German himself says a thing like 
that that he illuminates in a flash the abyss which 
yawns between the moral qualities of the youth 
of his country and the young American or young 
Englishman. 

Again the same author speaks on the subject of the 
Anglo-Saxon love of fair play (the sporting instinct, I 
have called it) as follows : 

" The demand for ' fair play ' dominates the whole 
American people, and shapes public opinion in all 
matters whether large or small. And with this finally 
goes the belief in the self-respect and integrity of one's 
neighbour. The American cannot understand how 
Europeans " (Continental Europeans, if you please, Mr. 
Miinsterberg !) " so often reinforce their statements 
with explicit mention of their honour which is at stake, 
as if the hearer was likely to feel a doubt of it ; and 
even American children are often apt to wonder at 
young people abroad who quarrel at play and at once 
suspect one another of some unfairness. The Ameri- 
can system does not wait for years of discretion to 
come before exerting its influence; it makes itself felt 
in the nursery, where already the word of one child is 
never doubted by his playmates." 

There is an excellent American slang word, which 
is "poppycock." The Century Dictionary speaks dis- 
respectfully of it as a " United States vulgarism," but 
personally I consider it a first-class word. The Cent- 
ury Dictionary defines it as meaning, " Trivial talk ; 



The Peoples at Play 427 

nonsense; stuff and rubbish," which is about as near 
as a dictionary can get to the elusive meaning of any 
slang word. English readers will understand the exact 
shade of meaning of the word when I say that the para- 
graph above quoted is most excellent and precise pop- 
pycock. Every American who read that paragraph 
when the book was published must have chuckled in- 
wardly, just as every Englishman would chuckle. But 
the point which I wish to emphasise is that it is not 
at all poppycock from the author's point of view. 
I doubt not that his countrymen have been most 
edified by that excellent dictum, and the trouble is 
that one could never make a typical German under- 
stand wherein it is wrong. No, Mr. Miinsterberg, it is 
not that the sentence is untrue — far be it from me to 
suggest such a thing. It is merely absurd ; and you, 
sir, will never, never, never comprehend why it 
is so. 

It is in the presence of such a remark, seriously 
made by so excellently capable a foreigner, that the 
Englishman and American ought to be able to shake 
hands and realise how much of a kin they are and how 
far removed from some other peoples. 

I have dwelt on this subject of the games of the 
two peoples at what may seem to many an unneces- 
sary length, because I do not think its importance 
can well be exaggerated. It is not only desirable, but 
it is necessary, for a thorough mutual liking between 
them that there should be no friction in matters of sport. 
No incident has, I believe, occurred of late years which 
did so much harm to the relations between the peoples 
as did the Dunraven episode in connection with the 



428 The Twentieth Century American 

America's cup races. I should be inclined to say that 
it did more harm (I am not blaming Lord Dunraven) 
than the Venezuelan incident. 

On the other hand, it is doubtful whether the more 
recent attempts to recover the cup, and the spirit in 
which they have been conducted, have not contributed 
as much as, say, the attitude of England in the Span- 
ish War to the increased liking for Great Britain 
which has made itself manifest in the United States of 
recent years. Few Englishmen, probably, understand 
how much is made of such matters in the American 
press. The love of sport is in the blood of both peo- 
ples and neither can altogether like the other until it 
believes it to have the same generous sporting instincts 
and the same clean methods as itself. As a matter of 
fact, they do — as in so many other traits — stand out 
conspicuously alike from among all other peoples, but 
neither will give the other full credit for this, till each 
learns to see below such slight surface appearances as 
at present provoke occasional ill-will in one party or 
the other. Fuller understanding will come with time 
and with it entire cordiality. 



CHAPTER XVI 
Summary and Conclusion 

A New Way of Making Friends — The Desirability of an 
Alliance — For the Sake of Both Peoples — And of All the World 
— The Family Resemblance — Mutual Misunderstandings — 
American Conception of the British Character — English Mis- 
apprehension of Americans — Foreign Influences in the United 
States — Why Politicians Hesitate — An Appeal to the People — 
And to Caesar. 

At first sight it may not seem the likeliest way to 
make two people care for each other to go laboriously 
about to tell each how the other underestimates his 
virtues. Don Pedro's wile would appear to be the 
more direct — to tell Benedick how Beatrice doted on 
him, and Beatrice how Benedick was dying for her 
love. I have always had my doubts, however, about 
the success of that alliance. 

In the case of two peoples so much alike as the 
English and the American, between whom friendship 
and alliance would be so entirely in accord with eternal 
fitness, who are yet held apart by misunderstanding on 
the part of each of the other's character, there seems no 
better way than to face the misunderstandings frankly 
and to endeavour to make each see how unjustly it 
undervalues the other's good qualities or overestimates 
its faults. At present neither Americans nor English- 
men understand what good fellows the others are. 

429 



43° The Twentieth Century American 

Least of all do they understand how essentially they 
are the same kind of good fellows. 

In summarising the contents of the foregoing pages, 
there is no need here to rehearse, except in barest out- 
line, the arguments in favour of alliance between the 
countries. The fact that war between them is an ever- 
present possibility ought in itself to suffice — war which 
could hardly fail to be more sanguinary and destruc- 
tive than any war that the world has known. The 
danger of such a war is greater, perhaps, than the peo- 
ple of either country recognises, certainly greater than 
most Englishmen imagine. The people of England 
do not understand the warlike — though so peace-loving 
— character of the American nation. It is just as war- 
like as, though no less peace-loving than, the English, 
without the restraint of that good- will which the Eng- 
lish feel for the United States ; without, moreover, the 
check, to which every European country is always sub- 
jected, of the fear of complications with other Powers. 
The American people, as a whole, it cannot be too 
earnestly impressed on Englishmen, have no such 
good- will towards Great Britain as Englishmen feel for 
them ; and not even English reluctance to draw the 
sword, nor the protests of the better informed and 
the more well-to-do people in the United States would 
be able to restrain what Mr. Cleveland calls " the plain 
people of the land " if they once made up their mind 
to fight. 

Apart from the possibility of war between the two 
nations themselves, there is the constant peril, to which 
both are exposed, of conflict forced upon them by the 
aggressions of other Powers. That peril is always 
present to both, to the United States now no less — 



Summary and Conclusion 43 1 

perhaps even more — than to Great Britain. The fact 
that neither need fear a trial of strength with any other 
Power or any union of Powers, is beside the question. 
Consciousness of its own strength is no guarantee to 
any nation that it will not be forced into conflict. 
Eather, by making it certain that it, at least, will not 
draw back, does it close up one possible avenue of 
escape from catastrophe when a crisis threatens. 

But beyond all this — apart from, and vastly greater 
than, the considerations of the interest or the security 
of either Great Britain or the United States — is the 
claim of humanity. The two peoples have it in their 
hands to give to the whole world no less a gift than 
that of Universal and Perpetual Peace. It involves 
no self-sacrifice, the giving of this wonderful boon, for 
the two peoples themselves would share in the benefit 
no less than other peoples, and they would be the 
richer by the giving. It involves hardly any effort, 
for they have but to hold out their hands together and 
give. It matters not that the world has not appealed 
to them. The fact remains that they can do this thing 
and they alone ; and it is for them to ask their own 
consciences whether any considerations of pride, any 
prejudice, any absorption in their own affairs — any 
consideration actual or conceivable — can justify them 
in holding back. Still more does it rest with the 
American people — usually so quick to respond to high 
ideals — to ask its conscience whether any considera- 
tion, actual or conceivable, can justify it in refusal 
when Great Britain is willing — anxious — to do her 
share. 

That such an alliance must some day come is, I be- 
lieve, not questionable. That it has not already come 



43 2 The Twentieth Century American 

is due only to the misunderstanding by each people of 
the character of the other. Primarily, the two peoples 
do not understand how closely akin — how of one kind 
— they are, how alike they are in their virtues, and 
how their failings are but the defects of the same in- 
herited qualities, even though shaped to somewhat 
diverse manifestations by differences of environment. 
Two brothers seldom recognise their likeness one to 
the other, until either looks at the other beside a 
stranger. Members of one family do not easily per- 
ceive the family resemblance which they share ; 
rather are they aware only of the individual differ- 
ences. But strangers see the likeness, and in their 
eyes the differences often disappear. So Englishmen 
and Americans only come to a realisation of their re- 
semblance when either compares the other critically 
with a foreign people. Foreigners, however, see the 
likeness when they look at the two together. And 
those foreigners who know only one of the peoples will 
sketch the character of that people so that it might be 
taken for a portrait of the other. In all essentials the 
characters are the same ; in minor attributes only, such 
as exist between the individual members of any family, 
do they differ. 

Not only does neither people understand with any 
clearness how like it is to the other, but each is under 
many misapprehensions — some trivial, some vital — in 
regard to the other's temperament and ways of life. 
These misapprehensions are the result chiefly of the 
geographical remoteness of the lands, so that in- 
timate contact between anything like an appreciable 
portion of the two peoples has been impossible ; and, 
when thus separated by so wide a sea, Great Britain 



Summary and Conclusion 433 

has been too consumedly engrossed in the affairs of the 
world to be able to give much time or thought to the 
United States, while America has been too isolated 
from that world, too absorbed in her own affairs, to 
be able to look at England in anything like true 
perspective. 

Arising thus from different causes, the errors of the 
two peoples in regard to each other have taken different 
forms. Great Britain, always at passes with a more or 
less hostile Europe, has never lost her original feeling 
of kinship with, or good- will towards, the United States. 
There has been no time when she would not gladly 
have improved her knowledge of, and friendship with, 
the other, had she at any time been free from the 
anxieties of the peril of war with one Power or another, 
from the burden of concern for her Empire in India, 
from the weight of her responsibilities in regard to 
Australia, South Africa, Egypt, and the various other 
parts of Britain over seas. Engrossed as she has been 
with things of immediate moment to her existence, she 
has been perforce compelled to take the good-will of 
the remote United States for granted, and to assume 
that there was no need to voice her own. Until at last 
she was awakened with a rudeness of awakening that 
shocked and staggered her. 

For the United States had had no such constant 
burden of anxiety, no perpetual friction with other 
peoples, to keep her occupied. Rather, sitting aloof 
in her isolation she had looked upon all the Powers of 
Europe as actors in a great drama with which she had 
no other than a spectacular concern. Only of all the 
Powers, by the very accident of common origin, by the 
mere circumstances of the joint occupation of the con- 
28 



434 The Twentieth Century American 

tinent, Great Britain alone has been constantly near 
enough to the United States to impinge at times upon 
her sphere of development, to rub against her, to stand 
in her way. Great Britain herself has hardly known 
that this was so. But it has had the effect to make 
Great Britain in the mind of the United States the one 
foreign Power most potentially hostile. 

In aloofness and silence, ignorant of the world, the 
American people nursed its wrath and brooded over 
the causes of offence which have seemed so large 
to it, though so trivial or so unintentional on the part 
of England, till the minds of the majority of the peo- 
ple held nothing but ill-feeling and contempt in response 
to England's good-will towards them. And always the 
United States has had those at her elbow who were 
willing — nay, for their own interests, eager — to play 
upon her wounded feelings and to exaggerate every 
wrong and every slight, however small or imaginary, 
placed upon her by Great Britain. 

Thus the two peoples not only misunderstand each 
other but they misunderstand each other in different 
ways. They look at each other from widely sundered 
points of view and in diverse spirits. The people of 
the United States dislike and distrust Great Britain. 
They cannot believe that Great Britain's good-will for 
them is sincere. The expressions of that good-will, 
neglected while the American people was compara- 
tively weak and finding expression now when it is 
strong, the majority of Americans imagine to be no 
more than the voice of fear. That alone shows their 
ignorance of England — their obliviousness of the kin- 
ship of the peoples. The two are of one origin and 
each may take it for granted that neither will ever be 



Summary and Conclusion 435 

afraid of the other — or of any other earthly Power. 
That is not one of the failings of the stock. 

The American people has thus never attained to any 
right view of the British Empire. By the accident 
of the war which gave the nation birth, the name 
"British" became a name of reproach in American 
ears. They have never since been able to look at 
Great Britain save through the cross-lights of their 
own interests, which have distorted their vision, while 
there have always been those at hand poisoning the 
national mind against the English. So they think of 
the British Empire as a bloody and brutal thing : of 
her rule of India in particular as a rule of barbarity 
and cruel force. Of late years American writers have 
come to tell Americans the truth; namely, that if the 
power of Great Britain were to be wiped out to-morrow 
and all her monuments were to perish except only 
those that she has built in India, the historians of 
future generations, looking only to those monuments 
in India, would pronounce Great Britain to have been, 
of all the Powers that have held great Empire since 
the beginning of time, the largest benefactor to the 
human race. But of this the American people as a 
whole knows nothing. It only knows that sepoys 
were blown from the mouths of British guns. So 
Englishmen know that negroes in the South are 
lynched. 

And as the American people has formed no com- 
prehension of the British Empire as a whole and is 
without any understanding of its spirit, so it has drawn 
for itself a caricature of the British character. As the 
Empire is brutal and sanguinary, so is the individual 
bullying and overbearing and coarse. The idea was 



43 6 The Twentieth Century American 

originally inherited from England's old enemies in 
Europe. It was a reflection of the opinion of the 
French ; but it has been confirmed by the frankness of 
criticism of English travellers of all things in the 
United States. Americans do not recognise that by 
their own sensitiveness and anxiety for the judgment 
of others — a necessary, if morbid, result of their isola- 
tion and self-absorption — they invited the criticism, 
even if they did not excuse its occasional ill-breeding ; 
nor has it occurred to them that the habit of outspoken 
criticism of all foreign things is a common inheri- 
tance of the two peoples and that they themselves are 
even more garrulously, if less bluntly — even more 
vaingloriously, if less arrogantly — frank in their habit 
of comment even than the English. 

The same isolation and self-absorption as bred in 
them their sensitiveness to the opinions of others, made 
the Americans also unduly proud of such traits or ac- 
complishments as strangers found to praise in them. 
This in itself might be good for a nation ; but, so far 
as their understanding of Englishmen is concerned, it 
has unfortunately led them to suppose that those char- 
acteristics which they possess in so eminent a degree 
are proportionately lacking in the English character, 
which thereby incurs their contempt. Having been 
over-complimented on their own humour, they have de- 
termined that the Englishman is slow-witted, with no 
sense of fun — an opinion in itself so lacking in appre- 
ciation of its own absurdity as to be self-confounding. 
Too well assured of their own chivalrousness (a foible 
which they share with all peoples) they know the 
Englishman to be a domestic tyrant, incapable of true 
reverence of womanhood. Proud, not without reason, 



Summary and Conclusion 437 

of their own form of government, wherein there is no 
room for a titled aristocracy, they delight in holding 
the peerage of Great Britain up to contempt (withal 
that there is a curious unconfessed strain of jealousy 
mingling therewith), and piecing together, like a 
child playing with bricks, the not too infrequent 
appearances of individual peers in the divorce or 
bankruptcy courts, they have constructed a fantastic 
image of the British aristocracy as a whole, wherein 
every member appears as either a roue or a spendthrift. 
Because they are — and have been so much told that 
they are — so full of push and energy themselves, they 
believe Englishmen to be ponderous and without 
enterprise ; whereas if, instead of keeping their eyes 
and minds permanently intent on their own achieve- 
ments, they had looked more abroad, they would have 
seen that, magnificent as has been the work which 
they have done in the upbuilding of their own nation 
and wonderful as is the fabric of their greatness, there 
has simultaneously been evoked out of chaos a British 
Empire, vaster than their own estate, and which is 
only not so near completion as their own structure in 
proportion as it is on a larger ground plan, inspired 
by larger ideas and involving greater (as well as 
infinitely more diffused) labour in its uprearing. 

The statement of these facts involves no impugn- 
ment of American urbanity, American wit, American 
chivalry, or American enterprise. Only they are not 
so unique as Americans, in their isolation, conceive 
them to be. There are, in fact, others. It might not 
even be worth saying so much, if it were not that the 
belief in their uniqueness has necessarily resulted in 
American minds in a depreciation of the English 



438 The Twentieth Century American 

character, which by so much helps to keep the two 
peoples estranged. Americans will be vastly more 
ready to believe in their English kinship, to like the 
English people, and to welcome a British alliance if 
they once get it into their heads that the English, as a 
nation, are just as fearless, just as chivalrous, no less 
fond of a joke or more depraved, nor much less enter- 
prising or more careless of the feelings of others than 
themselves. That they think of Englishmen as they do 
to-day is not to be wondered at, and no blame attaches 
to them ; for it is but a necessary result of causes which 
are easily seen. But the time has come when some 
effort to correct the errors in their vision is possible 
and desirable — not merely because they are unfair to 
Englishmen, which might be immaterial, and is no 
more than a fair exchange of discourtesies, but because 
the misunderstandings obstruct that good-will which 
would be such an untellable blessing, not only to the 
two peoples themselves, but to all the human race. 

I am well aware that many American readers will 
say: "What is the man talking of ? I do not think 
of Englishmen like that!" Of course you do not, 
excellent and educated reader — especially if you have 
travelled much in Great Britain or if you are a mem- 
ber of those refined and cultured classes (what certain 
American democrats would call the " silk-stocking 
element ") which constitute the select and entirely 
charming society of most of the older cities of the 
Atlantic seaboard as well as of some of the larger 
communities throughout the country. If, belonging 
to those classes, you do not happen to have made it 
your business, either as a politician or a newspaper 
man, to be in close touch with the real sentiments 



Summary and Conclusion 439 

of the masses of the country as a whole, you scarcely 
believe that anybody in America — except a few Irish- 
men and Germans — does think like that. If, however, 
you happen to be a good "mixer" in politics or have 
enjoyed the austerities of an apprenticeship in journal- 
ism, — if in fact you know the sentiments of your 
countrymen, I need not argue with you. Nor per- 
haps are very many Americans of any class conscious 
of holding all these views at once. None the less, if a 
composite photograph could be made of the typical 
Englishman as he is figured in the minds of, let us 
say, twenty millions of the American people — exclud- 
ing negroes, Indians, and foreigners — the resultant 
figure would be little dissimilar from the sketch which 
I have made. 

And I have said that, in holding these ideas, the 
Americans do but make a fair exchange of discourte- 
sies ; for the Englishman has likewise queer notions 
of the typical American. There is always this vast 
difference, however, that the Englishman is predisposed 
to like the American. In spite of his ignorance he 
feels a great — and, in view of that ignorance, an almost 
inexplicable — good-will for him. But it is not inex- 
plicable, for once more the causes of his misapprehen- 
sions are easily traced. 

First, there has been the eternal pre-occupation of 
the English people with the affairs of other parts of the 
world. When Great Britain has been so inextricably 
involved with the policies of all the earth that almost 
any day news might come from Calcutta, from Berlin, 
from St. Petersburg, from Pekin, or Teheran, or from 
almost any point in Asia, Africa, or Australia, which 
would shake the Empire to its foundation, how could 



440 The Twentieth Century American 

the people spare time to become intimately acquainted 
with the United States ? Of course Englishmen talk 
of the "State of Chicago," and — as I heard an English 
peasant not long ago — of " Yankee earls." 

During all these years individual Americans have 
come to England in large numbers and have been duly 
noted and observed; but what the people of any nation 
notices in the casually arriving representatives of any 
other is not the points wherein the visitors resemble 
themselves, but the points of difference. In the case 
of Americans coming to England the fundamental 
traits are all resemblances and therefore escape notice, 
while only the differences — which by that very fact 
stand proclaimed as non-essentials — attract attention. 
So it is that the English people, having had acquaint- 
ance with a number of typical New Englanders, have 
drawn their conclusion as to the universality of one 
strong nasal American accent; they think the Ameri- 
can people garrulously outspoken in criticism, with a 
rather offensive boastfulness, without any conscious- 
ness that precisely that same trait in themselves, in a 
slightly different form, is one of the chief causes why 
Englishmen are not conspicuously popular in any 
European country. From peculiarities of dress and 
manner which are not familar to him in the product of 
his own public schools and universities, the Englishman 
has been inclined to think that the American people 
is not, even in its " better classes," a population of 
gentlemen. 

Moreover, many Englishmen go to the United States 
— the vast majority for a stay of a few days or weeks, 
or a month or two — and they tell their friends, or the 
public at large in print, all about America and its peo- 



Summary and Conclusion 441 

pie. It is not given to every one to be able, in the 
course of a few weeks or a month or two, to see below 
the surface indications down to the root-traits of a peo- 
ple — a feat which becomes of necessity the more diffi- 
cult when those root-traits are one's own root-traits and 
the fundamental traits of one's own people at home, 
while on the surface are all manner of queer, confusing 
dazzlements of local peculiarities which jump to the 
stranger's vision and set him blinking. Yet more dif- 
ficult does the feat appear when it is realised that the 
American people is scattered over a continent some 
three thousand miles across — so that San Francisco is 
little nearer to New York than is Liverpool — and that 
the section of the people with whom the Englishman 
necessarily comes first and, unless he penetrates both far 
and deep into the people, most closely in contact is 
precisely that class from which it is least safe to draw 
conclusions as to the thoughts, manners, or politics of 
the people as a whole. Therefore it is that one of the 
most acute observers informed Europe that in America 
" a gentleman had only to take to politics to become 
immediately declasse " — which, speaking of the politics 
of the country as a whole, is purely absurd. The 
visiting Englishman has generally found the whole 
sphere of municipal and local politics a novel field to 
him and has naturally been interested. Probing it, he 
comes upon all manner of tales of corruption and 
wickedness. He does not see that the body of 
American " politics," as the word is understood in 
England, is moderately free from these taints, but 
he tells the world of the corruption in that sphere 
of politics which he has studied merely because it 
does not exist at home and is new to him; and all 



44 2 The Twentieth Century American 

the world knows that American politics are indescrib- 
ably corrupt. 

Similarly the visiting European goes into polite so- 
ciety and is amazed at the peculiar qualities of some 
of the persons whom he meets there. He tells stories 
about those peculiar people, but the background of the 
society, against which these people stood out so clearly, 
a background which is so much like his own at home 
almost escapes his notice or is too uninteresting and 
familiar to talk about. There is no one to explain 
fully to the English people that while in England edu- 
cated society keeps pretty well to itself, there are in 
America no hurdles — or none that a lively animal may 
not easily leap — to keep the black sheep away from 
the white, or the white from straying off anywhere 
among the black, so that a large part of the English 
people has imbibed the notion that there are really no 
refined or cultured circles in the United States. 

"Whenever a financial fraud of a large size is discov- 
ered in America, the world is told of it, just as cer- 
tainly as it is told when an English peer finds his way 
to the divorce court ; but nobody expounds to the 
nations the excellence of the honourable lives which 
are led by most American millionaires, any more than 
the world is kept informed of the drab virtue of the 
majority of the British aristocracy. Wherefore the 
English people have come to think of American busi- 
ness ethics as being too often of the shadiest ; whereas 
they ought on reflection to be aware that only in most 
exceptional cases can great or permanent individual 
commercial success be won by fraud, and that nothing 
but fundamental honesty will serve as the basis for a great 
national trade such as the United States has built up. 



Summary and Conclusion 443 

Visiting Englishmen are bewildered by the strange 
types of peoples whom they see upon the streets and 
by the talk which they hear of "German elements" 
and " French elements " and " Scandinavian elements " 
in the population. But they do not as a rule see that 
these various "elements," when in tjie first generation 
of citizenship, are but a fringe upon the fabric of 
society, and when in the second or third generation 
they have a tendency to become entirely swallowed 
up and to merge all their national characteristics by 
absorption in the Anglo-Saxon stock ; and that 
apart from and unheeding all these irrelevant ap- 
pendages, the great American people goes on its way, 
homogeneous, unruffled, and English at bottom. 

Finally Englishmen read American newspapers and, 
not understanding the different relation in which those 
newspapers stand to the people, they compare with 
them the normal English papers and draw inferences 
which are quite unjust. Similar inferences no less 
unjust may be drawn from hearing the speech of a 
certain number of well-to-do Americans, belonging, as 
Englishmen opine, to the class of "gentlemen." 

These misunderstandings do less harm to the Eng- 
lishman than to the American, inasmuch as the 
Englishman has that predisposition to national cordial- 
ity which the American has not. But, though the 
Englishman's mistakes do not influence his good-will 
to the United States, though he himself attaches no 
serious importance to them, his utterance of them is 
taken seriously by the Americans themselves and does 
not tend to the promotion of international good feel- 
ing. Therefore it is that it is no less desirable that 
English misconceptions of the United States should 



444 The Twentieth Century American 

be corrected than it is that the American people 
should be brought to a juster appreciation of the 
British character and Empire. 

It is in America, doubtless, that missionary work is 
most needed, inasmuch as all England would at 
any minute welcome an American alliance with enthu- 
siasm ; while in the United States any public sug- 
gestion of such an alliance never fails to provoke 
immediate and vehement protest. It is true that that 
protest issues primarily from the Irish and Grerman 
elements ; and it may seem absurd that the American 
people as a whole should suffer itself to be swayed in 
a matter of so national a character by a minority 
which is not only comparatively unimportant in num- 
bers, but which the true American majority regards 
with some irritability as distinctly alien. 

There are a large number of constituencies in the 
United States, however, where the Irish and German 
votes, individually or in combination, hold the balance 
of power in the electorate, and not only must many 
individual members of Congress hesitate to antagonise 
so influential a section of their constituents, but it is 
even questionable whether the united and harmonious 
action of those two elements might not, under certain 
conditions, be able to unseat a sufficient number of 
such individual members as to change the political 
complexion of one or both of the Houses of Congress, 
and even, in a close election, of the Administration 
itself. Nor is it necessary to repeat again that when 
the anti-British outcry is raised, though primarily by 
a minority and an alien minority, it finds a response in 
the breasts of a vast number of good Americans in 
whom the traditional dislike of England, though 



Summary and Conclusion 445 

latent, still persists solely by reason of misapprehen- 
sion and misunderstandings. Therefore it is that so 
many of the best Americans, who in their hearts know 
well how desirable an alliance with England would 
be, are content to deprecate its discussion and to say 
that things are well enough as they are ; though again 
I say that things are never well enough so long as 
they might be better. However desirable such an 
alliance may be, however much to the benefit of the 
nation, it would, they say, be bad politics to bring 
it forward as a party question. And to bring it 
forward without its becoming from the outset a party 
question would be plainly impossible. 

But would it be bad politics? Can it ever, in the 
long run, be bad politics to champion any cause which 
is great and good? It might be that it would be diffi- 
cult for an individual member of Congress to come 
forward as the active advocate of a British alliance 
and not lose his seat ; but in the end, the man who did 
it, or the party which did it, would surely win. When 
two peoples have a dislike of each other based on in- 
timate knowledge by each of the other's character, to 
rise as the champion of their alliance might be hopeless; 
but when two peoples are held apart only by misunder- 
standing and by lack of perception of the boons that 
alliance between them would bring, it can need but 
courage and earnestness to carry conviction to the 
people and to bring success. 

In such a cause there is one man in America to whom 
one's thoughts of necessity turn ; and he is hampered 
by being President of the United States. Perhaps 
when his present term of office is over Mr. Eoosevelt, 



446 The Twentieth Century American 

instead of seeking the honourable seclusion which so 
often engulfs ex-Presidents, will find ready to his hand 
a task more than worthy of the man who was instru- 
mental in bringing peace to Eussia and Japan, — a task 
in the execution of which it would be far from being a 
disadvantage that he is as cordially regarded in Ger- 
many as he is in England and has hi mself great good- will 
towards the German Empire. Any movement on the 
part of Great Britain in company with any European 
nation could only be regarded by Germany as a con- 
spiracy against herself : nothing that England or France 
or Japan — or any Englishman, Frenchman, or Japanese 
— could say or do would be received otherwise than 
with suspicion and resentment. But, after all, the good 
of humanity must come before any aspirations on the 
part of the German Empire, and it is the American 
people which must speak, though it speaks through 
the mouth of its President. If the American people 
makes up its mind that its interest and its duty alike 
dictate that it should join hands with England in the 
cause of peace, neither Germany nor any Power can do 
otherwise than acquiesce. 

It is no novelty, either in the United States or in 
other countries, for considerations of temporary political 
expediency to stand in the way of the welfare of the 
people, nor is there any particular reason why an 
American politician should attach any importance to 
the desires of England. But we find ourselves again 
confronted with the same old question, whether the 
American people as a whole, who have often shown an 
ability to rise above party politics, can find any excuse 
for setting any consideration, either of individual or 
partisan interest, above the welfare of all the world. 



Summary and Conclusion 447 

Yet once more : It is for Americans individually to ask 
their consciences whether any considerations whatever, 
actual or conceivable, justify them in withholding from 
all humanity the boon which it is in their power, and 
theirs alone, to give, — the blessing of Universal and 
Perpetual Peace. 

And yet, when this much has been said, it seems that 
so little has been told. It was pointed out, in one of 
the earlier chapters, how the people of each country in 
looking at the people of the other are apt to see only the 
provoking little peculiarities of speech or manner on 
the surface, overlooking the strength of the character- 
istics which underlie them. So, in these pages, it 
seems that we, in analysing the individual traits, have 
failed to get any vision of the character of either people 
as a whole. It is the trees again which obscure the 
view of the forest. 

We have arrived at no general impression of the 
British Empire or of the British people. We have 
shown nothing of the majesty of that Empire ; of its 
dignity in the eyes of a vast variety of peoples ; of the 
high ambitions (unspoken, after the way of the English, 
but none the less earnest), which have inspired and still 
inspire it; of its maintenance of the standards of justice 
and fair dealing ; of its tolerance or the patience with 
which it strives to guide the darkened peoples towards 
the light. Nothing has been said of the splendid ser- 
vice which the Empire receives from the sons of the 
Sea Wife ; yet certainly the world has seen nothing 
comparable to the Colonial services of Great Britain, 
of which the Indian Civil Service stands as the type. 

Nor have we said anything of the British people, 



448 The Twentieth Century American 

with its steadfastness, in spite of occasional frenzies, 
its sanity, and its silent acceptance, and almost auto- 
matic practice, of a high level of personal and political 
morality. Above all we have seen nothing of the 
sweetness of the home life of the English country 
people, whereof the more well-to-do lead lives of wide 
sympathies, much refinement, and great goodness ; 
while the poor under difficult conditions, hold fast to 
a self-respecting decency, little changed since the days 
when from among them, there went out the early set- 
tlers to the New England over seas, which never fails, 
notwithstanding individual weaknesses, to win the 
regard of one who lives among them. 

So of the American people ; we have conveyed no 
adequate impression of the manly optimism, the 
courageous confidence in the ultimate virtue of good- 
ness and sound principles, on which the belief in the 
destiny of their own country is based. The nation 
has prospered by its virtues. Every page of their 
history preaches to the people that it is honesty and 
faith and loyalty which succeed, and they believe in 
their future greatness because they believe themselves 
to possess, and hope to hold to, those virtues as in the 
past. 

It may be that, living in the silences and solitudes 
of the frontier and the wilderness, they have found the 
greater need of ready speech when communication has 
offered. It may be that the mere necessity of plan- 
ning together the framework of their society and of 
building up their State out of chaos has imposed on 
them the necessity of more outspokenness. Certainly 
they have discarded, or have not assumed, the reti- 
cence of the modern English of England ; and much 



Summary and Conclusion 449 

of this freedom of utterance Europeans misinterpret, 
much (because the fashion of it is strange to them- 
selves) they believe to be insincere. In which judg- 
ments they are quite wrong. The American people 
are profoundly sincere and intensely in earnest. 

Since the establishment of the Eepublic, in the 
necessity of civilizing a continent, in the breathless 
struggle of the Civil War, in the rapidity with which 
society has been compelled to organize itself, in the 
absorption and assimilation of the continuous stream 
of foreign immigrants, the people have always been 
at grips with problems of immediate, almost desper- 
ate urgency ; and they have never lost, or come near 
to losing, heart or courage. They have learned above 
all things the lesson of the efficacy of work. They 
have acquired the habit of action. Self-reliance has 
been bred in them. They know that in the haste of 
the days of ferment abuses grew up and went un- 
checked ; and they know that in that same haste they 
missed some of the elegancies which a more leisurely 
and easier life might have given opportunity to ac- 
quire. But for a generation back, they have been 
earnestly striving to eradicate those abuses and to lift 
themselves, their speech, their manners, their art and 
literature to, at least, a level with the highest. It 
has been impossible in these pages (it would perhaps 
be impossible in any pages) to give any unified picture 
of this national character with its activity, its self- 
reliance, its belief in the homely virtues and its ear- 
nest ambition to make the best of itself. But of the 
future of a people with such a character there need 
be no misgivings, and Americans are justified in the 
confidence in their destiny. 



45° The Twentieth Century American 

What is needed is that these two peoples holding, 
with similar steadfastness, to the same high ideals, 
pushing on such closely parallel lines in advance of 
all other peoples, should come to see more clearly 
how near of kin they are and how much the world 
loses by any lack of unison in their effort. 

Once more let me ask readers to turn back and read 
again the paragraphs from other pens with which this 
book is introduced. 



APPENDIX. (See Chapter III., pp. 81, sqq.) 

This book was almost ready for the press when Dr. 
Albert Shaw's collection of essays was published under 
the title of TJie Outlook for the Average Man. Dr. Shaw 
is one of America's most lucid thinkers and he con- 
tributes what I take to be a new (though once stated 
an obviously true) explanation of what I have spoken 
of as the homogeneousness of the American people. 
The West, as we all know, was largely settled from the 
East. That is to say that a family or a member of a 
family in New York moved westward to Illinois, thence 
in the next generation to Minnesota, thence again to 
Montana or Oregon. A similar movement went on 
down the whole depth of the United States, families 
established in North Carolina migrating first to Ken- 
tucky, then to Ohio, so to Texas, and finally on to 
California. All parts of the country therefore have, as 
the nucleus of their population, people of precisely 
the same stock, habits, and ways of thought. The West 
was settled " not by radiation of influence from the 
older centres, but by the actual transplantation of the 
men and women." Dr. Shaw proceeds : 

" England is not large in area and the people are 
generally regarded as homogeneous in their insularity. 
But as a matter of fact the populations of the different 
parts of England are scarcely at all acquainted in any 
other part. Thus the Yorkshireman would only by 

45i 



45 2 The Twentieth Century American 

the rarest chance have relatives living in Kent or Corn- 
wall. The intimacy between North Carolina and 
Missouri, for example, is incomparably greater than 
that between one part of England and another part. 
In like manner, the people of the North of France 
know very little of those of the South of France, or 
even of those living in districts not at all remote. 
Exactly the same thing is true of Italy and Germany, 
and is characteristic of almost every other European 
land. As compared with other countries, we in 
America are literally a band of brothers." — The Outlook 
for the Average Man, pages 104, 105. 



INDEX 



Academy, newspaper, the, 159 

Alderman, election of an, 
239; "Mike," 252 

Alliance, Anglo-American, 
desirable, 7, 430 

Alliances, entangling, what 
they mean, 5 

Amateurs, in sport, 421 

American accent, the, 106 

American dislike of England, 
43, 46, 98 sqq., 112, 430 

American journalists in Lon- 
don, 220 

"American methods," in 
business, 328 

American people, the, a belli- 
cose people, 8; its fondness 
for ideal, 10; sensitive to 
criticism, 34; dislike of 
subterfuges, 34; an Anglo- 
Saxon people, 37, 87, 140; 
and its leading men, 48; 
foreign elements in, 58, 
80, 227, 443; self-reliant, 
67; resourceful, 70; homo- 
geneous, 80, 211, 451; 
quick to move, 87; "sense 
of the state " in, 89; its am- 
bitions, 90; character of, 
influenced by the country, 
97; likes round numbers, 
105; its provincialism, 113; 
its isolation, 116, 434; 
effect of criticism on, 115, 
157; its attitude toward 
women, 119 sqq.; its in- 
sularity, 146; manners of, 
147; pushfulness, 148; did 
not invent all progress, 



151; humour of, 152; its 
literature, 157; science, 
159; art, 160; architecture, 
160; its self-confidence, 
164; factors in the educa- 
tion of, 171; influence of 
the Civil War on, 188 
its hunger for culture, 189 
not superficial, 193, 204 
eclecticism 194; musical 
knowledge of, 199; drama 
of, 201; takes culture in 
paroxysms, 203; looks to 
the future, 208; political 
corruption in, 234; great 
parties in, 256; political 
sanity of, 284; purifying 
itself, 300, 324, 336, 353, 
364; aristocracy in, 309; 
shrinks from European 
commercial conditions, 331 ; 
hatred of trusts, 331 ; mis- 
represented by its press, 
340; contempt for heredi- 
tary legislators, 346; com- 
mercial integrity, 351; re- 
ligious feeling in, 353; 
insistence of an individ- 
uality, 382; a character 
sketch, 448 

American speech, uniformity 
of, 85, 209 

Americanisms, in English 
speech, 209; their origin 
in America, 216; disappear- 
ing, 224 

Americans, at home in Eng- 
land, 36; fraternise with 
English abroad, 38; and 
"foreigners," 39; as sailors, 
62; their ambitions, 90; 



453 



454 



Index 



Americans — Continued 

in London, 106; ignorant 
of foreign affairs, 113; 
treatment of women, 119 
sqq.; their insularity, 146; 
energy, 148; humour, 152; 
what they think of Eng- 
lish universities, 169; pride 
of family in, 181; know no 
"betters," 194; ambitious 
of versatility, 205; as 
linguists, 206; purists in 
speech, 219; cannot lie, 
352; as story-tellers, 366; 
non-litigious, 394; do not 
build for posterity, 396; dis- 
like stamps, 398; as sports- 
men, 409 

Anglais, V, 2, 37, 141 

Anglomania, 163 

Anglo-Saxon, family likeness, 
the, 35, 432; particularist 
spirit, 37; versatility, 74; 
spirit in America, 87, 244; 
superiority, 118; attitude 
towards women, 140; 
ideals in education, 170; a 
fighting race, 187; ambi- 
tion to be versatile, 205 
and Celt in politics, 254 
superior morality of, 349 
pluck and energy, 381 
the sporting instinct, 426 

Anstey, F. L., his German 
professor, 156 

Archer, Wm., on the Anglo- 
Saxon type, 38; on the 
American's outlook on the 
world, 97; on pressing 
clothes, 214 

Architecture, American, 160 

Aristocracy, in the U. S., 309; 
the British disreputable, 
338, 442 

Arnold, Matthew, his judg- 
ment of Americans, 108; 
his clothes, 108; on Ameri- 
can colleges, 167; on Amer- 
ican newspapers, 177; on 
generals as booksellers, 185 



Art, American, 160; feminine 

knowledge of, 182 
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa 

Fe Railroad, the, 363 
Athletics in England and 

America, 420 
Atlantis, a new, 94 



B 



Baldwin, W. H., 305 
Banks, American and Eng- 
lish, 383 
Barnard College, 142 
Bears, bickering with, 381 
Bell-cord, divination by the, 

363 
Benedick and Beatrice, 429 
Bonds, recoiling from, 236 
Books, advantage of reading, 
172; ease of buying, in 
America, 174; prices of, 
175; publishing American, 
in England, 221 
Booksellers as soldiers, 185 
Bosses in politics, 239, 252, 

274 
Boston, culture of, 195, 219 
Botticelli, 185 
Brewers as gentlemen, 315 
Bribery in American politics, 

234 
"British," hatred of the 

name, 57 
British bondholders, 52 
British commerce, 52 
British Empire, American 
misunderstanding of, 20, 
112, 151, 435; its size, 437; 
its beauty, 447 
Brvan, W. J., first nomina- 
tion of, 234, 273; and W. 
R. Hearst, 283 
Bryce, James, on American 
electoral system, 247; on 
State sovereignty, 262; on 
political corruption, 279; 
on the U. S. Senate, 287 
Buffalo in New York, 416 



/ 



Index 



455 



Buildings, tall, built in sec- 
tions, 368 

Burke, Edward, in Ireland, 
101; indictment against a 
whole people, 101 

Business, as a career, 317; 
its effect on mentality, 318; 
the romance of American, 
319; frauds in, 324; the 
tendency of modern, to con- 
solidations, 330; specula- 
tion in America, 386; less 
ruthless in America, 388; 
slipshod, 395; principles 
of modern, 401 



California, the Japanese in, 
263, 287 

Cambon, M. Paul, 139 

Campbell, Wilfred, in Eng- 
land, 92 

Canada, American invest- 
ments in, 379 

Canadian opinion of Eng- 
land, 92; resemblance to 
Americans, 379 

Carlyle, Thomas, 190 

Caruso, Signor, 384 

Celts, non-Anglo-Saxon, 254 

Century Club, the, 103 

Champagne Standard, The, 
147 

Chaperons, 381, 393 

Chatham and American man- 
ufactures, 375 

Cheques, cashing, 383 

Chicago, pride in itself, 163; 
pigs in, 177 

Civil War, the navy in the, 
64; causes of, 11; magni- 
tude of, 186; its value to 
the people, 188, 218 

Classics, American reprints 
of English, 174 

Cleveland, Grover, on Vene- 
zuela, 43, 109 

Climate, the English, 121,350 



Co-education, its effect on 

the sexes, 127; in America, 

142 
Colonies, destiny of British, 

94 
Colquhoun, A. R., 113 
Commercial morality, 308 
Concord school, the, 157 
Congress, corruption in, 244; 

compared with Parliament, 

246, 249; more honest than 
supposed, 252; powers of, 
289; best men excluded 
from, 345 

Congressmen, how influenced, 

247, 251; how elected, 247; 
log-rolling among, 249; 
hampered by the Constitu- 
tion, 402 

Conkling, Roscoe, 148 

Constitution, U. S., growth 
of, 6; interpretation of, 
288; and Congress, 402 

Consular service, the Ameri- 
can, 78 

Contract, a proposed inter- 
national, 33S 

Convention, a National Lib- 
eral, 270 

Copyright laws, English, 
faulty, 221 

Corporations, Mr. Roosevelt 
and the, 296; persecuted by 
individual States, 403 

Corruption, in municipal af- 
fairs, 232, 239, 242; in 
national affairs, 234; in 
State legislatures, 235; in 
English counties, 237; in 
Congress, 244; in the rail- 
way service, 361 

Court, U. S. Supreme, 400 

Criticism, English, of Amer- 
ica, 116, 157; American, of 
England, 117 

Croker, Richard, 278 

Cromwell as a fertiliser, 190 

Crooks, William, elected 
Premier, 271 

Crosland, W. H., 88 



45^ 



Index 



Cuba as a cause of war, 12 
Cyrano de Bergerac, 196, 202 

D 

Debtors favoured by laws, 
403 

Democrats correspond to 
Liberals, 256 

Demolins, Edmond, on Anglo- 
Saxon superiority, 2; on 
V Anglais, 37 

Doctor, the making of a, 69 

" Dog eat dog," 388 

Domestic and imported 
goods, 163 

Drama, the, in England and 
America, 201 

Drunkenness, in London, 131 

Dunne, F. P., 154 

E 

Education, in England and 
America, 166; object of 
American, 193 

Elections, purity of, 229 
(note); municipal, 239; to 
Congress, 241; of a Prime 
Minister, 265; the last Eng- 
lish general, 274; virulence 
of American, 281 

Electric light, towns lighted 
by, 367 

Embalmed beef scandals, 341 

Emerson, R. W., on the Civil 
War, 188; the apostle of 
the individual, 382 

English-made goods, 365, 373 

English society, changes in, 
314 

English "style" in printing, 
221 

Englishmen, local varieties 
of, 85; effect of expansion 
on, 95; feeling of, toward 
Americans, 99, 434; as 
specialists, 105; dropping 
their H's, 106; check- 
suited, 108; their cosmo- 
politanism, 114; as hus- 



bands, 123; insularity of 
145; as grumblers, 149 
lecturing, 195; as linguists 
206; study of antiquity 
208; careless of speech, 220 
in American politics, 226 
in English politics, 231 
political integrity of, 238 
278; and business, 321 
misunderstand American 
people, 347; the world's 
admiration of, 349; re- 
ligious feeling in, 353; 
sense of honour in, 359; 
commercial morality of, 
365; distrust American in- 
dustrial stability, 371; as 
investors in U. S. and 
Canada, 379; slowness of, 
380; as sportsmen, 415; 
admirable qualities of, 448 
European plan, the, 104 
Exhibition, an American, in 
London, 161 



Federal Government, the, 
and Illinois, 262; and Lou- 
isiana, 262; and California, 
263; powers of , 288 

Federalism, progress of, in 
America, 217 

Feminism, 139 

Ferguson, 133 

Fliegende Blatter, 153 

Football in England, 412 

Foreign elements in the 
American people, 58, 80, 
82, 138, 226 

Forty-fourth Regiment, the, 
40 

France, England's entente 
with, 8; and American 
commerce, 378 

Franklin, Benjamin, his Au- 
tobiography, 157; and 
English political morality, 
280 



Index 



457 



Frauds in American business, 

324 
Free silver, poison, the, 235; 

campaign of 1896, 280 
Freeman, E. A., on the 

Englishman of America, 42 
Frenchmen, opinions of, 2, 

36, 37, 92, 139, 177, 378; 

attitude towards women, 

120; towards learning, 205 
Frontier life, as a discipline, 

72, 381 



G 



Gentleman, Bismarck's par- 
ole de, 234 
Gentlemen, brewers as, 315; 
and business men, 316; 
in sport, 420 
Gentlemen's agreement, the, 

354 
George, Lloyd, 334 
Germans, outnumber Irish 
in N. Y., 58; attitude 
toward women, 120, 140; 
humour of, 153; laborious- 
ness of, 205; in politics, 
226, 255; as judges of 
honesty, 351 (note); in 
sport, 426 
Germany, ambitions of, 29; 
Monroe Doctrine aimed at, 
46 
Gibson, C. D., 160 
Girl, the American, 130 
Gladstone, W. E., American 
admiration for, 167; on 
Japan, 205 
Golf, the power of, 409 
Granger agitation, the, 298 
Gravel-pit, politics in a, 282 
Great Britain, peaceful dis- 
position of, 8, 23; pride of, 
14, 61 ; desires alliance with 
U. S., 19; American hos- 
tility to, in 1895, 46; its 
nearness to America geo- 
graphically, 50; commer- 
cially, 52; historically, 54; 



America's only enemy, 55 
its army in S. Africa, 75 
diversity of tongues in, 85 
Norman influence in, 87 
Canadian opinion of, 92 
miraculously enlarged, 94 
insularity of, 145; luck of, 
149; cannot be judged 
from London, 150; class 
distinctions disappearing, 
212; politics in, 231; mu- 
nicipal bosses in, 232; 
American conditions trans- 
planted to, 237, 266; elect- 
ing a Prime Minister in, 
270; municipal politics 
in, 279; becoming demo- 
cratised, 314; a creditor 
nation, 323; trust-ridden, 
329; wealth of, 386; so- 
licitor-cursed, 393; as the 
mother of sports, 414; 
preoccupation of, 433 
"Grieg, the American," 200 

H 

Hague, Conference at The, 
17 

Hanotaux, Gabriel, on Amer- 
ican commerce, 378 

Harrison, Benjamin, 47 

Hays, C. M., 310 

Hearst, W. R., and England, 
46; bad influence of, 282; 
inventor of the yellow 
press, 342 (note) 

Hell-box, the, 281 

Hellen, Paul, 196 

Higginson, T. W., on Ameri- 
can temperament, 2 

Hill, James J., 310 

Hoar, U. S. Senator, on Eng- 
land, 1; on the hatred 
of the British, 57 

Homer as a Tory, 257 

Homogeneousness of the 
American people, 83, 211, 
451 

Hotel, the Fifth Avenue, 122 



458 



Index 



Hotels, ladies' entrances to, 

120 
Howells, W. D., 147 
Hughitt, Marvin, 311, 359 
Humour, American and Eng- 
lish, 152 



Ideals, American devotion 
to, 10 

Illinois and the Federal 
Government, 262 

Immigration problem, the, 
81 

India, 112 

Indians, red, regard of, for 

Englishmen, 349; in the 

war of Independence, 350 

(note); Turkish baths of, 

363 

Individuality, American in- 
sistence on, 382, 391 

Insularity, English and 
American, 145 

International sentiments, 
how formed, 291 

Ireland, Burke's feeling for, 
101 

Irish, the influence of, against 
England, 58, 444; attitude 
towards women, 140; vote 
in politics, 227; as a cor- 
rupting influence, 252; 
non-Anglo-Saxon, 254; lack 
independence, 255; in New 
York, 277 

Irving, Washington, on fron- 
tiersmen, 381 

Italians, in municipal poli- 
tics, 241, 253; lynched in 
New Orleans, 262 



James, Henry, 155 

Japan, England's alliance 
with, 8; its eclectic meth- 
od, 193; Mr. Gladstone on, 



205; and California, 263 
287; tin-tacks for, 375 

Japanese, in California, 263 
British admiration of, 351 
watering their horses, 367 
as "John," 376 

Johnson, Samuel, 132 

Joint purses, 332 

Jonson, Ben, 215 

Justice in American courts, 
400 

K 

King George men, 349 
Kipling, Rudyard, his "type- 
writer girl," 132; "The Sea 
Wife," 187; "The Monkey- 
Puzzler," 380; "An Error 
in the Fourth Dimension," 
408 



La Farge, John, 103, 161 

Lang, Andrew, on Ameri- 
canisms, 221 

Law, Bonar, 334 

Legislators must read and 
write, 71 

Legislatures, quality of Amer- 
ican State, 79, 401 

Letters, two, 3S9 

Lewis, Alfred Henry, 154 

Liberals, English, and Dem- 
ocrats, 256; influence of , on 
American thought, 346 

"Liberty, that damned ab- 
surd word," 10 

Life, New York, 129, 162 

Literature, English ignorance 
of American, 157 

Litigation, American dislike 
of, 394 

" Live and let live," 388 

Lobbyists, 244 

Locomotives, temporary and 
permanent, 396 

Log-rolling, 249 



Index 



459 



London, foreign affairs in, 

114; Strand improvements, 

151; "raining in," 163; 

a Tammany Hall in, 232 
Lord, Englishmen's love of a, 

309 
Lords, the House of, and 

the U. S. Senate, 313; a 

defence of, 342 
Louisiana and the Federal 

Government, 262 
Loyal Legion, the, 187, 189 
Luck, English belief in, 108 
Lying, American ability in, 

352 
Lynchings, 302 

M 

MacDowell, Edward, 200 
Mafia in New Orleans. 263 
Magazines, American, 160, 

171, 180 
Mansfield, Richard, 202 
Max O'Rell, on John Bull and 
Jonathan, 36, 92; on Amer- 
ican newspapers, 177 
Merchant marine, the Amer- 
ican, 63 
Mexico, possible annexation 

of, 27 
Mining camp life, 70, 132 
" Molly-be-damned," 134 
Monopolies, artificial and nat- 
ural, 407 
Moore, Zehico, 119 
Morality, of the two people, 
sexual, 120; political, see 
under Corruption; com- 
mercial, 308, 400; sporting, 
426 
Morgan, Pierpont, 358 
Mormons and ants, 214 
Morris, Clara, 201 
Mount Stephen, Lord, 310 
Municipal politics, 231, 239, 

242 
Miinsterberg, Hugo, on Eng- 
land, 36; on American 



commercial ethics, 351; on 
sport, 426 
Music in England and Amer- 
ica, 198 



N 



N- 



G- 



125 



Navarro, Madame de, 201 
Navigating, how to learn, 70 
Navy, the American, 62 
Negro problem, the, 301 
New Orleans, battle of, 41; 

the Mafia in, 263 
New York, not typically 
American, 72; proud of 
London, 163; culture of, 
219; Irish influence in, 256; 
in national politics, 277 
Newspapers, American and 
English, 177; sensational- 
ism in, 326; peculiarities of 
American, 340 
Norman influence in Eng- 
land, 87 
Northern Pacific Railroad, 

the, 361 
Norton, James, 163 



O 



Operas, American knowledge 

of, 198 
Opportunity, America and, 

387 
Oxenstiern, Count, 149 
Oxford, value of, 169 



Packing-house scandals, 326 

Panic, financial, the, of 1907, 
325, 402 

Parliament, railway influence 
in, 246; compared with 
Congress, 249, 344 

Parsnips, 102 

Parties, the two great, in 
America, 256; interdepend- 
ence of national and local 
organisations, 264 



460 



Index 



Patronage, party, 265 

Peace, universal, the possi- 
bility of, 13, 32, 431 

Peerage, an American, 310; 
democracy of the British, 
316; morals of, 338 

Pheasants in London, 416 

Philadelphia, corruption in, 
252 

Philistinism in England and 
America, 185 

Pigs, in Chicago, 177; how 
to roast, 372 

Pilgrims, the Society of, 47 

Platform in American sense, 
215 

Poet's Corner, 132 

Police, corruption through 
the, 232 

Politics, American, the for- 
eign vote in, 227, 443; the 
"best people" in, 228, 441; 
what it means in America, 
230; municipal, 231; Re- 
publican and Democrat, 
meaning of, 256; national 
and municipal, 264; Pres- 
ident Roosevelt in, 300 

Polo, American, 412 

Pooling, railway, 332, 357 

Poppycock, 426 

Postal laws, 171 

Posters, American humour 
and, 155 

Presidency, Mr. Roosevelt 
and the, 293 

Protection, policy of, 65. 
245, 253 

Publishers, American and 
English, 222 

Punch, London, 152, 198 

Putnam, Herbert, and H. G. 
Wells, 93 

R 

Railways, oppression of, by 
States, 297, 403; pooling 
by, 332; working agree- 



ments in English, 333; 
English and American at- 
titude towards, contrasted, 
334; morality on American, 
355; and English, 359; pec- 
ulation on, 361; and the 
Standard Oil Co., 392 

Reed, E. T., 154 

Reich, Dr. Emil, 126 

Religious feeling of the two 
peoples, 353 

Re-mount scandal, 341 

Representative system, the, 
247 

Republican party, the, in 
Philadelphia, 252; corre- 
sponds to English conserv- 
atives, 256 

Reverence, American lack 
of, 48, 76 

Rhodes, Cecil, 319 

Rhodes scholarships, 166 

River and harbour bills, 249 

Robin, the American, 215 

Robinson, Philip, on Chicago, 
177 

Rodin, A., 196 

Roman Catholic Church in 
relation to women, 140 

Roosevelt, imaginary tele- 
gram from, 16; and the 
merchant marine, 66; and 
purity of elections, 229 
(note) ; and post-route doc- 
trine, 290; his influence 
for good, 293; his common- 
place virtues, 293 (note); 
inventor of the " 'fraid 
strap," 294; "Teddy" or 
"Theodore," 295; an aris- 
tocrat, 295; and the corpo- 
rations, 296; misrepresen- 
tation of, 298; as a poli- 
tician, 300; his imperious- 
ness, 301; and the negro 
problem, 305; and wealth, 
336; as peacemaker, 445 

Rostand, M. E., 196 

Ruskin, John, price of his 
books, 175; on America's 



Index 



461 



Ruskin — Continued 

lack of castles, 191; on 

Tories, 257 
Russia, England's agreement 

with, 8 



B- 



S 
-, the Hon., 108 



Sailors, British and Amer- 
ican, fraternise, 39; Amer- 
icans as, 63 

Schools, American, 170; Eng- 
lish, 176 

Schurz, Carl, on American 
intelligence, 2 

Schuyler, Montgomery, 103 

Scotland, religious feeling in, 
354 

Sea-wife's sons, the, 187 

Senate, the, its place in the 
Constitution, 286; treaty- 
making power of, 287 ; and 
the House of Lords, 313 

Sepoys, blown from cannon, 
112 

Shakespeare in America, 195 

Shaw, Albert, 451 

Ship subsidies, 64 

Shooting in America, 418 

Sky-scrapers, 368 

Speculation in America, 387 

Smith, Sydney, on women 
speaking, 79 

Society, American, mixed, 
182, 442 

Soldiers, American and Brit- 
ish, in China, 39; compared, 
61; material for, in U. S., 
75; British, in S. Africa, 75; 
as farm hands, 186; as 
Presidents, 187 

Solicitors, 393 

South, the dying spirit of the, 
306 

Southerners, in Northern 
States, 228; lynchings by, 
303 

Spanish war, the, reasons 
for, 11; England's feeling 



in, 60; effect on the Amer- 
ican people, 113 

Sparks, Edwin E., on fron- 
tiersmen, 382 

Speech, uniformity of Amer- 
ican, 85; American and 
English compared, 209, 
219; purism in, 219 

Sport, amateur, in America, 
409 

Stage, the American, 201 

Stamp tax, American dislike 
of, 398 

Stamped paper, 398 

Standard Oil Co., 391 

State legislatures, corrup- 
tion in, 235; shortcomings 
of, 401 

States, governments of the, 
260; sovereignty of, 261, 
285, 290; and English 
counties, 264 (note); jus- 
tice in, 401 

Steel, American competition 
in, 375 

Steevens, G. W., on Anglo- 
American alliance, 3; on 
American feeling for Eng- 
land, 100 

Stenographers as hostesses, 
132 

Stevenson, R. L., on Ameri- 
can speech, 85 

Strap, the 'fraid, 294 

Strathcona and Mount Royal, 
Lord, 310 

Style, American and English 
literary, 221 

Superficiality of Americans, 
193, 204 

Surveyor, the making of a, 
69 



Table d'hote in America, 104 
Tammany Hall, 278 
Taxes, corrupt assessment 
of, 242 



462 



Index 



Thackeray, W. M., on Anglo- 
American friendship, 1 
Thomas, Miss M. Carey, 143 
Thoreau, his Walden, 157 
Throne, the British, as a 

democratic force, 335 
Tin-tacks for Japan, 375 
Travis, W. J., 408 
Treaties, inability of U. S. 
to enforce, 263', 285; how 
made in America, 286 
Truesdale, W. H., 359 
Trusts, Mr. Roosevelt and 
the, 295; in England and 
America, 329, 334, 391; 
beneficial, 406 

U 

Unit rule, the, 267, 270 

United States, the, has be- 
come a world-power, 6; in 
danger of war, 8; power of, 
14; expansion of, 24; 
further from England than 
England from it, 50; the 
future of, 90; size of, 94; 
the equal of Great Britain, 
163; unification of, 217; 
politics in, 227; Congress 
of, 244; and Italy, 262; and 
Japan, 263; its treaty re- 
lations with other powers, 
286; a peerage in, 310; its 
reckless youth, 323; has 
sown its wild oats, 324; 
growth of, 364; commercial 
power of, 371; a debtor 
nation, 384 

Universities, American and 
English, 167 

Usurpation by the general 
government, 289 



Van Horne, Sir William, 310 
Venezuelan incident, the, 43, 

156 
Verestschagin,Vasili, 197, 202 



Vigilance Committees, 302. 

364 
Vote, foreign in America, the, 

227 
Voting, premature, 227 

W 

Wall Street methods, 326 

War stores scandal, 341 

Washington, Booker, 305 

Wealth, President Roosevelt 
and, 296; its diffusion in 
America, 330; no counter- 
poise to, in U. S., 335; 
purchasing power of, in 
England and America, 335 
(note); prejudice against, 
403 

Wells, H. G., on American 
"sense of the State," 89; 
on the lack of an upper 
class in America, 309 (note) ; 
on trade, 404 

West, the feeling of, for the 
East, 73; English ignorance 
of, 200; Yankee distrust 
of, 369 

West Indies, transfer to the 
U. S., 32 

West Point, incident at, 41 

Whiskey and literature, 175 

Wild-fowling, 418 

Winter, E. W., 359 

Woman, an American, in 
England, 103; in West- 
minster Abbey, 132; in a 
mining camp, 133; on a 
train, 134 

Women, American attitude 
toward, 119 sqq.; in the 
streets of cities, 120; Eng- 
lish, in America, 122; Eng- 
lish treatment of, 123; the 
morality of married, 129; 
adaptability of American, 
137; their share in civic 
life, 137; Anglo-Saxon atti- 
tude toward, 140; effect 



Index 



46. 



Women — Continued 

of co-education on, 143; 

culture of American, 182; 

musical knowledge of 

American, 198 
World, the N. Y., 342 (note) 



Yankee, the real, 369; earls, 

440 
Yellow press, the, 327, 340, 

342 (note) 



Our European Neighbours 

Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON 

12°. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20 
By Mail 1.30 

I.— FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Hannah Lynch. 

" Miss Lynch's pages are thoroughly interesting and suggestive. 
Her style, too, is not common. It is marked by vivacity without 
any drawback of looseness, and resembles a stream that runs 
strongly and evenly between walls. It is at once distinguished and 
useful. . . . Her five-page description (not dramatization) of the 
grasping Paris landlady is a capital piece of work. . . . Such 
well-finished portraits are frequent in Miss Lynch's book, which is 
small, inexpensive, and of a real excellence." — The London Academy. 
" Miss Lynch's book is particularly notable. It is the first of a 
series describing the home and social life of various European 
peoples — a series long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome. 
Her style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the 
kind for a book which is not at all statistical, political, or contro- 
versial. A special excellence of her book, reminding one of Mr. 
Whiteing's, lies in her continual contrast of the English and the 
French, and she thus sums up her praises: 'The English are 
admirable : the French are lovable.' "—The Outlook. 

II.— GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By W. H. Dawson, author of "Germany and the 
Germans," etc. 

"The book is as full of correct, impartial, well-digested, and 
well-presented information as an egg is of meat. One can only 
recommend it heartily and without reserve to all who wish to gain 
an insight into German life. It worthily presents a great nation, 
now the greatest and strongest in Europe." — Commercial Advertiser. 

III. -RUSSIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Francis H. E. Palmer, sometime Secretary tc 
H. H. Prince Droutskop-Loubetsky (Fquerry to 
II. M. the Emperor of Russia). 

" We would recommend this above all other works of its cHarai. 
ter to those seeking a clear general understanding of Russian life, 
character, and conditions, but who have not the leisure or inclinar 
tion to read more voluminous tomes. ... It cannot be too highly 
recommended, for it conveys practically all that well-informed 
people should know of 'Our European Neighbours.' "—Mail and 
Express. 



Our European Neighbours 



IV.—DUTCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By P. M. Hough, B.A. 

" There is no other book which gives one so clear a picture of 
actual life in the Netherlands at the p-esent date. For its accurate 
presentation of the Dutch situation in art, letters, learning, and 
politics as well as in the round of common life in town and city, 
this book deserves the heartiest praise."— Evening Post. 

"Holland is always interesting, in any line of study. In this 
work its charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people, 
their quaint characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress 
and customs, their quiet abstention from taking part in the great 
affairs of the world are clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The 
illustrations are of a high grade of photographic reproductions."— 
Washington Post. 

V.— SWISS LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Alfred T. Story, author of the "Building of 
the British Empire," etc. 

"We do not know a single compact book on the same subject 
in which Swiss character in all its variety finds so sympathetic and 
yet thorough treatment ; the reason of this being that the author 
has enjoyed privileges of unusual intimacy with all classes, which 
prevented his lumping the people as a whole without distinction 
of racial and cantonal feeling."— Nation. 

"There is no phase of the lives of these sturdy republicans 
whether social or political, which Mr. Story does not touch upon ; 
and an abundance of illustrations drawn from unhackneyed sub- 
jects adds to the value of the book."— Chicago Dial, 

VI.— SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By L. Higgin. 

"Illuminating in all of its chapters. She writes in thorough 
sympathy, bcrn of long and intimate acquaintance with Spanish 
people of to-day." — St. Paul Press. 

"The author knows her subject thoroughly and has written a 
most admirable volume. She writes with genuine love for the 
Spaniards, and with a sympathetic knowledge of their character 
and their method of life."— Canada Methodist Review 



Our European Neighbours 



VII.— ITALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By LUIGI VlLLARI. 

"A most interesting and instructive volume, which presents an 
intimate view of the social habits and manner of thought of the 
people of which it treats." — Buffalo Express. 

"A book full of information, comprehensive and accurate. Its 
numerous attractive illustrations add to its interest and value. We 
are glad to welcome such an addition to an excellent series." — 
Syracuse Herald. 



VIIL— DANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Jessie H. Brochner. 

" Miss Brochner has written an interesting book on a fascinat 
ing subject, a book which should arouse an interest in Denmark in 
those who have not been there, and which can make those who 
know and are attracted by the countty very homesick to return." — 
( 'ommercial Advertiser. 

"She has sketched with loving art the simple, yet pure and 
elevated lives of her countrymen, and given the reader an excellent 
idea of the Danes from every point of view." —Chicago Tribune. 



IX.— AUSTRO=HUNQARIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY 

By Francis H. E. Palmer, author of " Russian 

Life in Town and Country," etc. 

No volume in this interesting series seems to us so notable 01 
valuable as this on Austro-Hungarian life. Mr. Palmer's long resi 
dence in Europe and his intimate association with men of mark, 
especially in their home life, has given to him a richness of expert 
ence evident on every page of the book."— The Outlook. 

"This book cannot be too warmly recommended to those; who 
have not the leisure or the spirit to read voluminous tomes of this 
subject, yet we wish a clear general understanding of Austro-Huu 
garian life." Hartford Junes. 



Our European Neighbours 



X.— TURKISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By L. M. J. Garnett. 

"The general tone of the book is that of a careful study, the 
style is flowing, and the matter is presented in a bright, taking 
way." — Si. Paul Press. 

"To the average mind the Turk is a little better than a blood- 
thirsty individual with a plurality of wives and a paucity of vir- 
tues. To read this book is to be pleasantly disillusioned." Publis 
Opinion. 



XI.— BELGIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Demetrius C. Boulger 

"Mr. Boulger has given a plain, straight-forward account of 
the several phases of Belgian Life, the government, the court, the 
manufacturing centers and enterprises, the literature and science, 
the army, education and religion, set forth informingly."— The 
Detroit Free Press. 

" The book is one of real value conscientiously written, and 
well illustrated by good photographs. "— The Outlook. 



XII. -SWEDISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By G. von Heidenstam. 

"As we read this interesting book we seem to be wandering 
through this land, visiting its homes and schools and churches, 
studying its government and farms and industries, and observing 
the dress and customs and amusements of its healthy and happy 
people. The book is delightfully written and beautifully illus- 
trated." — Presbyterian Bannet . 

"In this intimate account of the Swedish people is given a 
more instructive view of their political and social relations than it 
has been the good fortune of American leaders heretofore to ob- 
tain."— Washington Even. Star. 



Our Asiatic Neighbours 



12°. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20 
By mail 1,30 



1. —INDIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Herbert Compton. 

" Mr. Com pton's book is the best book on India, its life and its 
people, that has been published in a long time. The reader will 
find it more descriptive and presenting more facts in a way that 
appeals to the man of English speech than nine-tenths of the 
volumes written by travellers. It sets forth the experiences of a 
quarter of a century, and in that period a man can learn a good 
deal, even about an alien people and civilization, if he keeps his 
eyes open. If the other volumes in the series are as good as 
' Indian Life in Town and Country ' it will score a decided suc- 
cess." — Brooklyn Eagle. 

" An account of nativelife in India written from the point of view 
of a practical man of affairs who knows India from long residence 
It is bristling with information, brisk and graphic in style, and 
open minder! and sympathetic in feeling." — Cleveland Leader. 



IL-JAPANESE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By George William Knox, D.D. 

" The childlike simplicity, yet innate complexity of the Japanese 
temperament, the strangely mingled combination of new ?nd old, 
important and worthless, poetic and commercial instincts, aims, 
and ambitions now at work in the land of the cherry blossom are 
wel! brought out by Dr. Knox's conscientious representation. The 
book should be widely read and studied, being eminently reason- 
able, readable, reliable, and informative." — Record-Herald. 

"A delightful book, all the more welcome because the ablest 
scholar in Japanese Confucianism that America has yet produced 
has here given us impressions of man and nature in the Archi- 
pelago. " —Evening Post. 



Our Asiatic Neighbours 



III.— CHINESE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By E. Bard. Adapted by H. TwiTcheu.. 

Every phase of Chinese life is touched on, explained, and made 
clear in this volume. The nation's customs, its traits, its religion, 
and its history, are all outlined here, and the book should be of 
great value in arriving at a better understanding of a people and a 
country about which ihere has been so much misconception. The 
illustrations add greatly to the value of the book. 

IV.— AUSTRALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By E. C. BUXEY. 

A bright, readable description of life in a fascinating and iittle- 
known country. The style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, cap- 
tivating, just the kind for a book which is not at all statistical, 
political, or controversial. 

V.— PHILIPPINE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By James A. LeRoy. 

Mr. EeRoy is eminently fitted to write on life in the Philip- 
pines. He was for several years connected with the Department of 
the Interior in the Philippine Government, when he made a 
special investigation of conditions in the islands. Since his return 
he has continued his studies and is already known as an author- 
ity on the Philippines. His book gives a full description of life 
among the native tribes, and also in the Spanish and American 
communities. 






C 310 88 



¥>he 



20- Century American 



1 N I 






H . Perry Robinson 



